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HAZLITT ON 
ENGLISH LITERATUEE 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 
APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE 



BY 



JACOB ZEITLIN, PH.D. 

ASSOCIATE IN ENGLISH 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



NEW YORK 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 West 32nd Street 

LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE. AND BOMBAY 
HUMPHREY MILFORD 

1913 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 






Copyright, igi^ 
BY Oxford University Press 

AMERICAN BRANCH 



©aA354463 



PREFACE 

The present selection of Hazlitt's critical essays has been 
planned to serve two important purposes. In the first place 
it provides the materials for an estimate of the character 
and scope of Hazlitt's contributions to criticism and so 
acquaints students with one of the greatest of English 
critics. And in the second place, what is perhaps more 
important, such a selection, embodying a series of appre- 
ciations of the great English writers, should prove helpful 
in the college teaching of literature. There is no great 
critic who by his readableness and comprehensiveness is 
as well qualified as Hazlitt to aid in bringing home to 
students the power and the beauty of the essential things 
in literature. There is in him a splendid stimulating energy 
which has not yet been sufficiently utilized. 

The contents have been selected and arranged to present 
a chronological and almost continuous account of English 
literature from its beginning in the age of Elizabeth down 
to HazHtt's own day, the period of the romantic revival. 
To the more strictly critical essays there have been added 
a few which reveal Hazlitt's intimate intercourse w^th 
books and also with their writers, whether he knew them 
in the flesh or only through the printed page. Such vivid 
revelations of personal contact contribute much to further 
the chief aim of this volume, which is to introduce the 
reader to a direct and spontaneous view of literature. 

The editor's introduction, in trying to fix formally Haz- 
Htt's position as a critic, of necessity takes account of his 
personality, which cannot be dissociated from his critical 

iii 



iv Preface 

practice. The notes, in addition to identifying quotations 
and explaining allusions, indicate the nature of Hazlitt's 
obligations to earlier and contemporary critics. They con- 
tain a body of detailed information, which may be used, 
if so desired, for disciplinary purposes. The text here em- 
ployed is that of the last form published in Hazlitt's own 
lifetime, namely, that of the second edition in the case of 
the Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, the lectures on the 
poets and on the age of Elizabeth, and the Spirit of the 
Age, and the first edition of the Comic Writers, the Plain 
Speaker, and the Political Essays. A slight departure from 
this procedure in the case of the essay on '* Elia " is ex- 
plained in the notes. " My First Acquaintance with Poets," 
and " Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen " are 
taken from the periodicals in which, they first appeared, as 
they were not republished in book-form till after Hazlitt's 
death. Hazlitt's own spellings and punctuation are retained. 

To all who have contributed to the study and apprecia- 
tion of HazHtt, the present editor desires to make general 
acknowledgement — to Alexander Ireland, Mr. W. C. Haz- 
litt, Mr. Birrell, and Mr. Saintsbury. Mention should also 
be made of Mr. Nichol Smith's Httle volume of HazHtt's 
Essays on Poetry (Blackwood's), and of the excellent 
treatment of Hazlitt in Professor Oliver Elton's Survey of 
English Literature from 1780 to 1830, which came to hand 
after this edition had been completed. A debt of special 
gratitude is owing to Mr. Glover and Mr. Waller for their 
splendid edition of Hazlitt's Collected Works (in twelve 
volumes with an index, Dent 1902-1906). All of Hazlitt's 
quotations have been identified with the help of this edi- 
tion. References to Hazlitt's own writings, when cited by 
volume and page, apply to the edition of Glover and Waller. 

Finally I wish to express my sincere thanks to Professor 
G. P. Krapp for his friendly cooperation in the planning 



Preface v 

and carrying out of this volume, and to him and to my col- 
league, Professor S. P. Sherman, for helpful criticism of 
the introduction. 

Jacob Zeitlin. 
February 20, 1913. 



CONTENTS 



Chronology of Hazlitt's Life and 

Writings .... 
Introduction 
I. The Age of Elizabeth 
II. Spenser .... 

III. Shakspeare .... 

IV. The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 

Cymbeline 
Macbeth 

Iago .... 

Hamlet .... 
Romeo and Juliet 
Midsummernight's Dream 
Falstaff 
Twelfth Night 
V. Milton ..... 
VI. Pope . . ., . 
VII. On the Periodical Essayists 
VIII. The English Novelists 
IX. Character of Mr. Burke . 

X. Mr. Wordsworth 
XI. Mr. Coleridge 
XII. Mr. Southey 

XIII. Elia 

XIV. Sir Walter Scott 

vii 



IX 

xi 
I 

21 

34 

5° 
6o 

72 

76 
84 
85 

88 
96 

lOI 

118 

155 
172 

191 

205 
216 
220 
227 



Vlll 



Contents 



CHAPTER 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 



Lord Byron ...... 

On Poetry in General . . . 
My First Acquaintance with Poets 
On the Conversation of Authors . 
Of Persons One Would Wish to Have 
Seen ....... 

On Reading Old Books .... 

Notes 349 



PAGE 
236 

277 
301 

333 



CHRONOLOGY OF HAZLITT'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 

1778 William Hazlitt born at Maidstone in Kent, April 10. 

1783-1786 Residence in America. 

1787 fif. Residence at Wem in Shropshire. 

1793-1794 Student in the Hackney Theological College. 

1798 JNIeeting with Coleridge and Wordsworth. 

i798?-i8o5 Study and practice of painting. 

1802 Visit to Paris. 

1805 Essay on the Principles of Human Action. 

1806 Free Thoughts on Public Affairs. 

1807 An Abridgment of the Light of Nature Revealed, by Abra- 

ham Tucker. 
Reply to the Essay on Population by the Rev. T. R. Mai thus. 
Eloquence of the British Senate. 

1808 Marriage with Sarah Stoddart and settlement at Winterslow. 
1810 A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue. 
1812 Removal to London. — Lectures on philosophy at the Russell 

Institution. 
1812-1814 On the staff of the Morning Chronicle. 
1814 Begins contributing to the Champion, Examiner, and the 

Edinburgh Review. 

1816 Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft. 

1817 The Round Table. 

The Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. 

1818 A View of the English Stage. 

Lectures on the English Poets. (Delivered at the Surrey 
Institution.) 

1819 Lectures on the English Comic Writers. (Delivered at the 

Surrey Institution at the close of 1818.) 
A Letter to William Gifford Esq., from William Haditt Esq. 
Political Essays. 

1820 Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. 

(Delivered at the Surrey Institution at the close of 1819.) 
Joins the staff of the London Magazine. 
1821-22 Table Talk, or Original Essays (2 volumes). 

1822 Episode of Sarah Walker. — Journey to Scotland to obtain a 

divorce from his wife. 

1823 Liber Amoris, or the New Pygmalion. 
Characteristics in the Manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims. 

1824 Sketches of the Principal Picture-Galleries in England, 

ix 



X Chronology of Hazlitt's Life and Writings 

Select British Poets. 

Marriage with Mrs. Bridgewater. — Tour of the Continent. 

1825 The Spirit of the Age. 

1826 Notes of a Journey through France and Italy. 

The Plain Speaker, Opinions on Books, Men, and Things 
(2 volumes). 
1828-1830 Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (4 volumes). 
1830 Conversations of James Northcote. 

Death of William Hazlitt, September 18. 



INTRODUCTION 

WILLIAM HAZLITT 

I 

Hazlitt characterized the age he lived in as " critical, 
didactic, paradoxical, romantic." ^ It was the age of the 
Edinburgh Review, of the UtiHtarians, of Godwin and 
Shelley, of Wordsworth and Byron — in a word of the 
French Revolution and all that it brought in its train. 
Poetry in this age was impregnated with politics ; ideas 
for social reform sprang from the ground of personal 
sentiment. Hazlitt was born early enough to partake of 
the ardent hopes which the last decade of the eighteenth 
century held out, but his spirit came to ripeness in years 
of reaction in which the battle for reform seemed a lost 
hope. While the changing events were bringing about cor- 
responding changes in the ideals of such early votaries to 
liberty as Coleridge and Wordsworth, Hazlitt continued to 
cling to his enthusiastic faith, but at the same time the 
spectacle of a world which turned away from its brightest 
dreams made of him a sharp critic of human nature, and 
his sense of personal disappointment turned into a bitter- 
ness hardly to be distinguished from cynicism. In a pas- 
sionate longing for a better order of things, in the merciless 
denunciation of the cant and bigotry which was enlisted 
in the cause of the existing order, he resembled Byron. 
The rare union in his nature of the analytic and the emo- 

* Dramatic Essays, VIII, 415. 
xi 



xii Introduction 

tional gave to his writings the very quaHties which he 
enumerated as characteristic of the age, and his consistent 
sincerity made his voice distinct above many others of his 
generation. 

HazHtt's earHer years reveal a restless conflict of the 
sensitive and the intellectual. His father, a friend of 
Priestley's, was a Unitarian preacher, who, in his vain 
search for liberty of conscience, had spent three years in 
America with his family. Under him the boy was accus- 
tomed to the reading of sermons and political tracts^ and 
on this dry nourishment he seemed to thrive till he was 
sent to the . Hackney Theological College to begin his 
preparation for the ministry. His dissatisfaction there was 
not such as could be put into words — perhaps a hunger 
for keener sensations and an appetite for freer inquiry 
than was open to a theological student even of a dissenting 
church. After a year at Hackney he withdrew to his 
father's home, where he found nothing more definite to 
do than to " solve some knotty point, or dip in some 
abstruse author^ or look at the sky, or wander by the 
pebbled sea-side." ^ This was probably the period of his 
most extensive reading. He absorbed the English novelists 
and essayists ; he saturated himself with the sentiment of 
Rousseau; he studied Bacon and Hobbes and Berkeley 
and Hume ; he became fascinated, in Burke, by the union 
of a wide intellect with a briUiant fancy and consummate 
rhetorical skill. ^ Though he called himself at this time 
dumb and inarticulate, and the idea of ever making lit- 
erature his profession had not suggested itself to him, he 
was eager to talk about the things he read, and in Joseph 
Fawcett, a retired minister, he found an agreeable com- 
panion. " A heartier friend or honester critic I never coped 

^ " On Living to One's Self," in Table Talk. 
' " On Reading Old Books," pp. 344-45. 



Introduction xiii 

withal." * " The writings of Sterne, Fielding, Cervantes, 
Richardson, Rousseau, Godwin, Goethe, etc. were the usual 
subjects of our discourse, and the pleasure I had had, in 
reading these authors, was more than doubled." ^ How 
acutely sensitive he was to all impressions at this time 
is indicated by the effect upon him of the meeting with 
Coleridge and Wordsworth of which he has left a record 
in one of his most eloquent essays, '' My First Acquaint- 
ance with Poets." But his active energies were concen- 
trated on the solution of a metaphysical problem which 
was destined to possess his brain for many years : in his 
youthful enthusiasm he was grappling with a theory con- 
cerning the natural disinterestedness of the human mind, 
apparently adhering to the bias which he had received from 
his early training. 

But being come of age and finding it necessary to turn 
his mind to something more marketable than abstract 
speculation, he determined, though apparently without any 
natural inclination toward the art, to become a painter. 
He apprenticed himself to his brother John Hazlitt^ who 
had gained some reputation in London for his miniatures. 
During the peace of Amiens in 1802, he travelled to the 
Louvre to study and copy the masterpieces which Napoleon 
had brought over from Italy as trophies of war. Here, 
as he " marched delighted through a quarter of a mile of 
the proudest efforts of the mind of man, a whole creation of 
genius, a universe of art," ^ he imbibed a love of perfection 
which may have been fatal to his hopes of a career. At any 
rate it was soon after, while he was following the pro- 
fession of itinerant painter through England, that he wrote 
to his father of " much dissatisfaction and much sorrow," 

* " On Criticism," in Table Talk. 

" Life of Holcroft, Works, II, 171, n. 

' " On the Pleasure of Painting," in Table Talk. 



xiv Introduction 

of " that repeated disappointment and that long dejection 
which have served to overcast and to throw into deep ob- 
scurity some of the best years of my Hfe." '^ 

When HazHtt abandoned painting, he fell back upon 
his analytic gift as a means of earning a Hving. Not 
counting his first published work, the Essay on the Princi- 
ples of Human Action, which was purely a labor of love 
and fell still-born from the press, the tasks to which he 
now devoted his time were chiefly of the kind ordinarily 
rated as job work. He prepared an abridgement of 
Abraham Tucker's Light of Nature, compiled the Elo- 
quence of the British Senate, wrote a reply to Malthus's 
Essay on Population, and even composed an elementary 
English Grammar. It would be a mistake to suppose that 
these labors were performed according to a system of 
mechanical routine. Hazlitt impressed something of his 
personality on whatever he touched. His violent attack on 
the inhuman tendencies of Malthus's doctrines is pervaded 
by a glow of humanitarian indignation. For the Eloquence 
of the British Senate he wrote a sketch of Burke, which 
for fervor of appreciation and judicious analysis ranks 
with his best things of this class. Even the Grammar bears 
evidence of his enthusiasm for an idea. Whenever he 
has occasion to express his feelings on a subject of popular 
interest, his manner begins to grow animated and his lan- 
guage to gain in force and suppleness. 

But Hazlitt continued firmly in the faith that it was his 
destiny to be a metaphysician. In 1812 he undertook to 
deliver a course of lectures on philosophy at the Russell 
Institution with the ambitious purpose of founding a system 

^ W. C. Hazlitt: Lamh and Hazlitt (1900), p. 44. The letter in 
which these phrases are to be found is dated 1793 by Mr. W. C. 
Hazlitt, but the present writer has given a detailed statement of 
his reasons for believing that it was written in 1803. See Nation, 
October 19, 191 1. 



Introduction xv 

of philosophy "more conformable to reason and experi- 
ence " than that of the modern material school which 
resolved '' all thought into sensation, all morality into the 
love of pleasure, and all action into mechanical impulse." ^ 
Though he did not succeed in founding a system, he proba- 
bly interested his audience by a stimulating review of the 
main tendencies of English thought from Bacon and Hobbes 
to Priestley and Godwin. 

At the conclusion of his last lecture, Hazlitt told the 
story of a Brahmin who, on being transformed into a 
monkey, " had no other delight than that of eating cocoanuts 
and studying metaphysics." '' I too," he added, *' should 
be very well contented to pass my life like this monkey, 
did I but know how to provide myself with a substitute 
for cocoanuts." But it must have become apparent to Haz- 
litt and his friends that he possessed a talent more profitable 
than that of abstract speculation. The vigor and vitality 
of the prose in these lectures, compared with the heavy, 
inert style of his first metaphysical writing, the freedom 
of illustration and poetic allusion, suggested the possi- 
bility of success in more popular forms of literature. He 
tried to work for the newspapers as theatrical and parlia- 
mentary reporter, but his temper and his habits were not 
adaptable to the requirements of daily journalism, and 
editors did not long remain complacent toward him. He 
did however, in the course of a few years, succeed in 
gaining admission to the pages of the Edinburgh Review 
and in establishing an enviable reputation as a writer of 
critical and miscellaneous essays. Even in that anonymous 
generation he could not long contribute to any periodical 
without attracting attention. Readers were aroused by his 
bold paradox and by the tonic quality of his style. Editors 
appealed to him for " dashing articles," for something 

« XI, 26. 



xvi Introduction 

"brilliant or striking" on any subject. Authors looked 
forward to a favorable notice from Hazlitt, and Keats 
even declared that it would be a compensation for being 
damned if Hazlitt were to do the damning. 

In his essays the features of HazHtt's personality may 
be plainly recognized, and these reveal a triple ancestry. 
He claims descent from Montaigne by virtue of his original 
observation of humanity with its entire accumulation of 
custom and prejudice; he is akin to Rousseau in a high- 
strung susceptibility to emotions, sentiments, and ideas ; and 
he is tinged with a cynicism to which there is no closer 
parallel than in the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The 
union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, and the man of the 
world is fairly unusual in literature, but in Hazlitt's case 
the union was not productive of any sharp contradictions. 
His common sense served as a ballast to his buoyant emo- 
tions ; the natural strength of his feelings loosened the 
bonds which attached him to his favorite theories ; his 
cynicism, by sharpening his perception of the frailty of 
human nature, prevented his philanthropic dreams from 
imposing themselves on him for reality. 

The analytical gift manifested itself in Hazlitt preco- 
ciously in the study of human nature. He characterized 
some of his schoolmates disdainfully as '' fit only for fighting 
like stupid dogs and cats," and at the age of twelve, while 
on a visit, he communicated to his father a caustic sketch 
of some English ladies who " require an Horace or a 
Shakespeare to describe them," and whose " ceremonial un- 
sociality " made him wish he were back in America. His 
metaphysical studies determined the direction which his 
observation of life should take. He became a remarkable 
anatomist of the constitution of human nature in the 
abstract, viewing the motives of men's actions from a specu- 
lative plane. He excels in sharp etchings which bring the 



Introduction xvii 

outline of a character into bold prominence. He is happy 
in defining isolated traits and in throwing a new light on 
much used words. " Cleverness," he writes, " is a certain 
knack or aptitude at doing certain things, which depend 
more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness than 
on force or perseverance, such as making puns, making 
epigrams, making extempore verses, mimicking the com- 
pany, mimicking a style, etc. . . . AccompHshments are 
certain external graces, which are to be learnt from others, 
and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the be- 
holder, viz. dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. . . . 
Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on 
application and industry, such as writing a criticism, making 
a speech, studying the law." ^ These innocent looking 
definitions are probably not without an ironic sting. It 
requires no great stretch of the imagination, for example, 
to catch in Hazlitt's eye a sly wink at Lamb or a disdainful 
glance toward Leigh Hunt as he gives the reader his idea 
of cleverness or accomplishment. 

Hazlitt's definitions often startle and give a vigorous 
buffet to our preconceptions. He is likely to open an essay 
on '' Good-Nature " by declaring that a good-natured man 
is '* one who does not like to be put out of his way. . . . 
Good-nature is humanity that costs nothing ; " ^^ and he 
may describe a respectable man as " a person whom there 
is no reason for respecting, or none that we choose to 
name." ^^ Against the imputation of paradox, which such 
expressions expose him to, he has written his own defence, 
applying his usual analytical acuteness to distinguish be- 
tween originality and singularity.^- The contradiction of 

* Table Talk, " On the Indian Jugglers." 
'" Round Table. 

" " On Respectable People," in Plain Speaker. 
^^ " On Paradox and Commonplace," in Table Talk, 



xviii Introduction 

a common prejudice, which always passes for paradox, is 
often such only in appearance. It is true that an ingenious 
person may take advantage of the elusive nature of language 
to play tricks with the ordinary understanding, but it is 
equally true that words of themselves have a way of im- 
posing on the uninquiring mind and passing themselves off 
at an inflated value. No process is more familiar than 
that by which words in the course of a long life lose all 
their original power, and yet they will sometimes continue 
to exercise a disproportionate authority. Then comes the 
original mind, which, looking straight at the thing instead 
of accepting the specious title, discovers the incongruity 
between the pretence and the reality, and in the first shock 
of the disclosure annoyingly overturns our settled ideas. 
This is the spirit in which Carlyle seeks to strip off the 
clothes in which humanity has irrecognizably disguised 
itself, and it is the spirit in which Robert Louis Stevenson 
tries to free his old-world conscience from the old-world 
forms. To take a more recent parallel, it is the manner, 
somewhat exaggerated, in which Mr. G. K. Chesterton 
examines the upstart heresies of our own agitated day. 
There would be nothing fanciful in suggesting that all these 
men owed a direct debt to Hazlitt — Stevenson on many 
occasions acknowledged it.^^ Hazlitt was as honest and 



^^ Hazlitt's Table Talk was included by Stevenson in a youthful 
Catalogus Librorum Carissimorum. It is interesting that at the 
same time that Carlyle was composing Sartor Resartus, Hazlitt 
should have penned this bit of savage satire. " It has been often 
made a subject of dispute, What is the distinguishing characteristic 
of man? And the answer may, perhaps, be given that he is the 
only animal that dresses. . . . Swift has taken a good bird's-eye 
view of man's nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, 
and looking at it in great or in little: would that some one had 
the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the 
coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up 
some other creature in similar mummery ! It is not his body alone 



Introduction xix 

sincere as any of them. Though the opening of an essay 
may^appear perverse, he is sure to enforce his point before 
proceeding very far. He accumulates famiUar instances 
in such abundance as to render obvious what at first seemed 
paradoxical. He writes " On the Ignorance of the 
Learned " and makes it perfectly clear that no person knows 
less of the actual life of the world than he whose experience 
is confined to books. On the other hand he has a whole- 
hearted appreciation of pedantry : '' The power of attaching 
an interest to the most trifling or painful pursuits, in 
which our whole attention and faculties are engaged, is 
one of the greatest happinesses of our nature. . . . He 
who is not in some measure a pedant, though he may be 
a wise, cannot be a very happy man." ^* These two exam- 
ples illustrate Hazlitt's manner of presenting both views of 
a subject by concentrating his attention on each separately 
and examining it without regard to the other. On one 
occasion he anatomizes the faults of the dissenters, and on 
another he extols their virtues. " I have inveighed all my 

that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully ; he tricks 
out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume 
of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base 
or a cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the 
spectators, he has only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and 
invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one 
time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth ran- 
corous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of 
sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a ' damned spot ' to be con- 
cealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress 
up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as 
assuredly as in san Benitos. . . . Strange, that a reptile should wish 
to be thought an angel ; or that he should not be content to writhe 
and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies ! It 
is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on 
May-day all the year round : the soot peeps through the rags 
and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!" Aphorisms on 
Man, LXIV, Works, XII, 227. 
^* Round Table, " On Pedantry." 



XX Introduction 

life against the insolence of the Tories, and for this I have 
the authority both of Whigs and Reformers ; but th^n I 
have occasionally spoken against the imbecility of the 
Whigs, and the extravagance of the Reformers, and thus 
have brought all three on my back, though two out of the 
three regularly agree with all I say of the third party." ^^ 
The strange thing is not that he should have incurred the 
wrath of all parties, but that he should show surprise at the 
result. 

Very often Hazlitt's reflections are the generalization of 
his personal experience. The essay " On the Disadvantages 
of Intellectual Superiority " is but a record of the trials 
to which he was exposed by his morbid sensitiveness and 
want of social tact, and amid much excellent advice " On 
the Conduct of Life," there are passages which merely 
reflect his own marital misfortunes. It is not so much that 
he is a dupe of his emotions, but in his view of life he 
attaches a higher importance to feeling than to reason, and 
so provides a philosophic basis for his strongest prejudices. 
" Custom, passion, imagination," he declares, " insinuate 
themselves into and influence almost every judgment we 
pass or sentiment we indulge, and are a necessary help (as 
well as hindrance) to the human understanding; to attempt 
to refer every question to abstract truth and precise defini- 
tion, without allowing for the frailty of prejudice, which 
is the unavoidable consequence of the frailty and imper- 
fection of reason, would be to unravel the whole web and 
texture of human understanding and society." ^^ 

It is this infusion of passion and sentiment, the addition 
of the warm breath of his personal experience, that gives 
the motion of Hfe to his analytic essays, and a deep and 
solemn humanity to his abstract speculations. Hazlitt felt 

'' " Knowledge of the World," XII, 307. 
'^"On Prejudice," XII, 396. 



Introduction xxi 

life with an intensity which reminds us of a more spacious 
age. " What a huge heap, a ' huge, dumb heap,' of wishes, 
thoughts, feehngs, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, 
joys, friendships, it is composed of ! How many ideas and 
trains of sentiment, long and deep and intense, often pass 
through the mind in only one day's thinking or reading, 
for instance ! How many such days are there in a year, 
how many years in a long life, still occupied with something 
interesting^ still recalling some old impression, still recurring 
to some difficult question and making progress in it, every 
step accompanied with a sense of power, and every moment 
conscious of the ' high endeavour and the glad success ! ' " ^^ 
What an exultant sense of power over the resources of 
life ! What an earnest delight in the tasting of every 
pleasure which the senses and the intelligence afford ! His 
enjoyments comprehended the widest range of sensations 
and activities. He loved nature, he loved books, he loved 
pictures, he loved the theatre, he loved music and dancing. 
He loved good talk and good fellowship ; he loved an idea 
and anyone who was susceptible to an idea. He also loved 
a spirited game of rackets, and though he hated brutality, 
he has left us a very vivid and sympathetic account of a 
prize-fight. Above all he loved the words truth and justice 
and humanity. With such sensibilities, it is no wonder 
that his last words should have been " I have had a happy 
Hfe." 

As the phrase is ordinarily understood, Hazlitt's dying 
expression might seem unaccountable. Outwardly few 
authors have been more miserable. Like the great French 
sentimentalist with whom we have compared him, a sus- 
picious distrust of all who came near him converted his 
social existence into a restless fever. He had the gift of 
interpreting every contradiction to one of his favorite prin- 
^^ Table Talk, " On the Past and Future." 



xxii Introduction 

ciples as a personal injury to himself, and in the tense state 
of party feeling then prevailing, the opportunities for 
taking offence were not limited. Hazlitt was one of the 
chief marks singled out for abuse by the critics of Govern- 
ment. To constant self-tormentings from within and per- 
secution from without, there was added the misfortune of 
an unhappy marriage and of a still more unhappy love 
affair which lowered him in his own eyes as well as in the 
eyes of the world. From the point of view of the practical 
man, HazHtt's life would be declared a failure. 

The result of Hazlitt's hard experiences with the realities 
of life was to confirm him in a devoted attachment to the 
past. All his high enthusiasms, his sanguine dreams, his 
purest feeHngs continued to live for him in the past, and 
it was only by recurring to their memory in the dim dis- 
tance that he could find assurance to sustain his faith. In 
the past all his experiences were refined, subtilized, trans- 
figured. A sunny afternoon on Salisbury Plain, a walk 
with Charles and Mary Lamb under a Claude Lorraine 
sky, a visit to the Montpelier Gardens where in his child- 
hood he drank tea with his father — occurrences as common 
as these were enveloped in a haze of glory. And rarer 
events, such as a visit to the pictures at Burleigh House, 
or to the galleries in the Louvre, tender visions of feminine 
grace and sweetness, were touched in the recollection with 
a depth and pathos which subdued even the most joyous 
impressions to a refined melancholy. In no other English 
writer is this rich sentiment of the past so eloquent, and 
no one was better qualified to describe its sources. " Time 
takes out the sting of pain; our sorrows after a certain 
period have been so often steeped in a medium of thought 
and passion, that they ' unmould their essence ' ; and all that 
remains of our original impressions is what we would wish 
them to have been. . . . Seen in the distance, in the long 



Introduction xxiii 

perspective of waning years^ the meanest incidents, en- 
larged and enriched by countless recollections, become inter- 
esting; the most painful, broken and softened by time, 
soothe." ^^ The " Farewell to Essay Writing " is per- 
fumed with the odor of grateful memories from which the 
writer draws his " best consolation for the future." He 
almost erects his feeHng for the past into a religion. 
'' Happy are they/' he exclaims, " who live in the dream of 
their own existence, and see all things in the light of their 
own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the 
guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into 
whom the spirit of the world has not entered ! . . . The 
world has no hold on them. They are in it, not of it; and 
a dream and a glory is ever around them ! " ^^ 

But this impassioned sentiment for the past was only a 
refuge such as Byron might seek among the glories of 
by-gone ages or amid the solitary Alpine peaks, where 
it was possible to regain the strength spent in grappling 
with the forces of the actual world and return newly nerved 
to the battle. For fighting was Hazlitt's more proper ele- 
ment. He could hate with the same intensity that he loved, 
and his hatred was aroused most by those whom he regarded 
as responsible for the overturning of his political hopes. 
Politics had played the most important part in his early 
education. In his father's house he had absorbed the spirit 
of protest, accustomed himself to arguing for the repeal 
of the Test Act, and to declaiming against religious and 
political persecution. At the age of twelve he had written 
an indignant letter to the Shrewsbury Chronicle against the 
mob of incendiaries which had destroyed the house of 
Priestley, and as a student at Hackney he showed sufficient 
self-reliance to develop an original " Essay on Laws." The 

'' Table Talk, ."Why Distant Objects Please." 
^' " Love of Power." XI, 268. 



xxiv Introduction 

defence of the popular cause was with him not an academic 
exercise, but a rehgious principle. " Since a little child, I 
knelt and Hfted up my hands in prayer for it." -° The 
emotional warmth of his creed was heightened by the read- 
ing of Rousseau, and in Napoleon it found a living hero on 
whom it could expend itself. 

An uncompromising attachment to certain fundamental 
principles of democracy and an unceasing devotion to Na- 
poleon constitute the chief elements of Hazlitt's political 
character. He sets forth his idea of representative govern- 
ment exactly in the manner of Rousseau when he proclaims 
that " in matters of feeling and common sense, of which 
each individual is the best judge, the majority are in the 
right. . . . It is an absurdity to suppose that there can 
be any better criterion of national grievances, or the proper 
remedies for them, than the aggregate amount of the actual, 
dear-bought experience, the honest feelings, and heart-felt 
wishes of a whole people, informed and directed by the 
greatest power of understanding in the community, un- 
biassed by any sinister motive." ^^ Hazlitt was not a repub- 
lican, and he disapproved of the Utopian rhapsodies of 
Shelley, woven as they seemed of mere moonshine, without 
applicability to the evils that demanded immediate reform. 
But he did insist that there was a power in the people to 
change its government and its governors, and hence grew 
his idolatry of Napoleon, who, through all vicissitudes, 
remained the '' Child and Champion of the Revolution," the 
hero who had shown Europe how its established despots 
could be overthrown. 

The news of Waterloo plunged Hazlitt into deep distress, 
as if it had been the shock of a personal calamity. Accord- 
ing to Haydon, " he walked about unwashed, unshaven, 

^° Life of Napoleon, chap. 34. 

""What is the People?" in Political Essays, III, 292. 



Introduction xxv 

hardly sober by day, always intoxicated by night, literally 
for weeks." But his disappointment only strengthened his 
attachment to his principles. These remained enshrined 
with the brightest dreams of his youth, and in proportion as 
the vision faded and men were beginning to scoff at it as 
a shadow, Hazlitt bent his energies to fix its outline and 
prove its reality. " I am attached to my conclusions," he 
says, " in consequence of the pain, the anxiety, and the 
waste of time they have cost me." -^ His doctrines con- 
tained nothing that was subversive of social order, and their 
ultimate triumph lends the color of heroism to a consistency 
which people have often interpreted as proof of a limited 
horizon. It is at least certain that he did not put his con- 
science out to market, and that his reward came in the form 
of the vilest calumny ever visited upon a man of letters. 

These were the most infamous years of the Quarterly 
Review and Blackwood's Magazine, both of which had 
been founded as avowed champions of reaction. Their pur- 
pose was to discredit all writers whose poHtics or the 
politics of whose friends differed from the Government. 
Everybody knows of the fate which Keats and Shelley suf- 



^^ He tells of an experience in crossing the Alps which he intends 
should be symbolic of his whole life. From a great distance he 
thought he perceived Mont Blanc, but as the driver insisted that it 
was only a cloud, " I supposed that I had taken a sudden fancy for 
a reality. I began in secret to take myself to task, and to lecture 
myself for my proneness to build theories on the foundation of 
my conjectures and wishes. On turning round occasionally, how- 
ever, I observed that this cloud remained in the same place, and 
I noticed the circumstance to our guide, as favoring my first sug- 
gestion ; for clouds do not usually remain long in the same place. 
We disputed the point for half a day, and it was not till the 
afternoon when we had reached the other side of the lake of 
Neufchatel, that this same cloud rising like a canopy over the 
point where it had hovered, ' in shape and station proudly eminent,' 
he acknowledged it to be Mont Blanc." Notes of a Journey 
Through France and Italy. Works, IX, 296. 



xxvi Introduction 

fered at their hands, chiefly because they were friends of 
Leigh Hunt, who was the editor of a Liberal newspaper 
which had displeased George IV. Even the unoffending 
Lamb did not escape their brutality, perhaps because he 
was guilty of admitting Hazlitt to his house. The weapons 
were misrepresentation and unconfined abuse, wielded with 
an utter disregard of where the blows might fall, in the 
spirit of a gang of young ruflians who knew that they were 
protected in their wantonness by a higher authority. In 
the chastened sadness of his later years Lockhart, who 
was one of the offenders, confessed that he had no personal 
grudge against any of Blackwood's victims, in fact that he 
knew nothing about any of them, but that at the request 
of John Wilson, his fellow-editor, he had composed '* some 
squibberies . . . with as little malice as if the assigned 
subject had been the court of Pekin." The sincere regret 
he expressed for the pain which his '' jokes " had inflicted 
ought perhaps to be counted in extenuation of his errors. 
It may be true, as his generous biographer suggests, that 
" his politics and his feud with many of these men was an 
affair of ignorance and accidental associations in Edin- 
burgh," that under different circumstances '* he might have 
been found inditing sonnets to Leigh Hunt, and supping with 
Lamb, Haydon, and Hazlitt." ^^ But meanwhile irreparable 
mischief had been done to many reputations, and the life 
of one man had been sacrificed to his sportiveness.-* 

The signal for the attack on Hazlitt was given by the 
Quarterly in connection with a review of The Round Table, 
Hazlitt's first book. The contents of this volume were 

^' Andrew Lang's Life of Lockhart, I, 63, 128-130. 

^* John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, was killed in 
a duel arising from his retaliatory attacks on Lockhart and the 
Blackwood School of Criticism. See London Magazine, II, 509, 
666 ; in, 76, and " Statement " prefatory to number for February, 
1821. 



Introduction xxvii 

characterized as " vulgar descriptions, silly paradox, flat 
truisms, misty sophistry, broken English, ill humour and 
rancorous abuse." ^^ A little later, when the Characters of 
Shakespeare's Plays seemed to be finding such favor with 
the public that one edition was quickly exhausted, the Quar- 
terly extinguished its sale by " proving that Mr. Hazlitt's 
knowledge of Shakespeare and the English language is on 
a par with the purity of his morals and the depth of his 
understanding." ^^ The cry was soon taken up by the 
Blackwood's people in a series on the Cockney School of 
Prose. Lockhart invented the expression " pimpled Haz- 
litt." It so happened that Hazlitt's complexion was unusu- 
ally clear, but the epithet clung to him with a cruel tenacity. 
When an ill-natured reviewer could find nothing else to say, 
he had recourse to " pimpled essays " or " pimpled criti- 
cism." ^^ The climax of abuse was reached in an article 
entitled " HazHtt Cross-Questioned," which a sense of de- 
cency makes it impossible to reproduce, and which resulted 
in the payment of damages to the victim. Even the pub- 
lisher Blackwood speaks of it, with what sincerity it is not 
safe to say, as disgusting in tone, and Murray, who was 
the London agent for the Magazine, refused to have any 
further dealings with it. But the harm was done. Hazlitt 
could not walk out without feeling that every passer-by had 
read the atrocious article and saw the brand of the social 
outcast on his features. 

In an atmosphere like this, it is scarcely to be wondered 
at if Hazlitt's temper, never of the amiable sort, should 

"April, 1817. 

''January, 1818 

" " I have been reading Frederick Schlegel. . . . He is like 
Hazlitt, in English, who talks pimples — a red and white corruption 
rising up (in little imitations of mountains upon maps), but con- 
taining nothing, and discharging nothing, except their own hu- 
mours." Byron's Letters, Jan. 28, 1821 (ed. Prothero, V, 191). 



xxviii Introduction 

have become embittered, nor is it strange that he should 
sometimes, through ignorance, have committed the fault of 
v^hich his enemies had been guilty in wantonness. Not con- 
tent with retaliating the full measure of malice upon the 
heads of his immediate assailants, he turned the stream of 
his abuse upon Sir Walter Scott, whom he singled out delib- 
erately as the towering head of a supposed literary con- 
spiracy. He is credited with remarking : " To pay these 
fellows in their own coin, the way would be to begin with 
Walter Scott, and have at his clump foot." ^^ Very mean- 
spirited this sounds to us^ who are acquainted with the 
nobility of Scott's character and who know with what mag- 
nanimous wisdom he kept himself above the petty alterca- 
tions of the day. But for Hazlitt, Sir Walter was the 
father-in-law and friendly patron of John Lockhart, he was 
the person who had thrown the weight of his powerful influ- 
ence to make John Wilson Professor of Moral Philosophy 
at the University of Edinburgh ! He did not carry his 
prejudice against the Author of Waverley. 

In some instances Hazlitt was consciously the aggressor, 
but his attacks were never wanton. He denounced Words- 
worth and Coleridge and Southey because they were rene- 
gades from the cause which lay nearest to his heart. Their 
apostasy was an unforgivable offence in his eyes, and his 
wrath was proportioned to the admiration which he other- 
wise entertained for them. It is true that he treated their 
motives hastily and unjustly, but none of his opponents set 
him the example of charity. In the earlier years of their 
acquaintance Coleridge had spoken of Hazlitt as a '' think- 
ing, observant, original man," one who " says things that 
are his own in a way of his own," ^^ whereas after their 

^* Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke's Recollections of Writers, 

147- 
^^ Joseph Cottle : Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 465. 



Introduction xxIx 

estrangement he discovered that Hazlitt was completely 
lacking in originality. Wordsworth, being offended at Haz- 
litt's review of the " Excursion," peevishly raked up an old 
scandal and wrote to Haydon that he was '' not a proper 
person to be admitted into respectable society." ^^ Perhaps 
Hazlitt was not as " respectable " as his poet-friends, but 
he had a better sense of fair play. At any rate, in a com- 
plete balancing of the accounts, Hazlitt's frequent displays 
of ill-temper are offset by the insidious, often unscrupulous 
baitings which he suffered from his opponents. 

Naturally his bitterness was extended to his reflections 
on mankind in general. He felt as if the human race had 
wilfully deceived his sanguine expectations, and he poured 
out his grievances against its refractoriness, taking revenge 
for his public and his private wrongs, in a passage in 
which high idealism is joined with personal spite, in which 
he has revealed himself in all his strength and weak- 
ness, and involved his enemies in a common ruin with 
himself. It concludes the essay " On the Pleasure of 
Hating " : 

" Instead of patriots and friends of freedom, I see nothing 
but the tyrant and the slave, the people linked with kings 
to rivet on the chains of despotism and superstition. I see 
folly join with knavery, and together make up public spirit 
and public opinions. I see the insolent Tory, the blind 
Reformer, the coward Whig! If mankind had wished for 
what is right, they might have had it long ago. The theory 
is plain enough ; but they are prone to mischief, ' to every 
good work reprobate.' I have seen all that had been done 
by the mighty yearnings of the spirit and intellect of men, 
' of whom the world was not worthy,' and that promised 
a proud opening to truth and good through the vista of 
future years, undone by one man, with just glimmering of 
^" Haydon's Correspondence and Table Talk, II, 32. 



XXX Introduction 

understanding enough to feel that he was a king, but not 
to comprehend how he could be king of a free people ! I 
have seen this triumph celebrated by poets, the friends of 
my youth and the friends of man, but who were carried 
away by the infuriate tide that, setting in from a throne, 
bore down every distinction of right reason before it; and 
I have seen all those who did not joifi in applauding this 
insult and outrage on humanity proscribed, hunted down 
(they and their friends made a bye-word of), so that it 
has become an understood thing that no one can live by his 
talents or knowledge who is not ready to prostitute those 
talents and that knowledge to betray his species, and prey 
upon his fellow-man. ... In private life do we not see 
hypocrisy, servility, selfishness, folly, and impudence suc- 
ceed, while modesty shrinks from the encounter, and merit is 
trodden under foot ? How often is ' the rose plucked from 
the forehead of a virtuous love to plant a blister there ! ' 
What chance is there of the success of real passion? What 
certainty of its continuance? Seeing all this as I do, and 
unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of 
meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of 
understanding, of indifference towards others and ignorance 
of ourselves — seeing custom prevail over all excellence, 
itself giving way to infamy — mistaken as I have been in 
my public and private hopes, calculating others from 
myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where 
I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the 
fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise 
myself ? Indeed I do ; and chiefly for not having hated and 
despised the world enough." ^^ — This is not exactly down- 
right cynicism ; it is more like disappointment, beating its 
head frantically against the wall of circumstance. Yet 
through his bitterest utterances there is felt the warm senti- 
^^ Plain Speaker. 



Introduction xxxi 

ment that, " let people rail at virtue, at genius and friend- 
ship as long as they will — the very names of these disputed 
qualities are better than anything else that could be sub- 
stituted for them, and embalm even the most angry abuse 
of them." ^2 

It is no wonder that Hazlitt has never been a popular 
favorite. With a stronger attachment to principles than 
to persons, lavishing upon ideas or the fanciful creations of 
art a passionate affection which he grudgingly withheld 
from human beings, stubbornly tenacious of a set of po- 
litical dogmas to which he was ready to sacrifice his dearest 
friends, morbidly sensitive to the faintest suggestion of a 
personal slight, and prompter than the serpent to vent 
against the aggressor the bitterness of his poison, he plays 
the role of Ishmael among the men of letters in his day. 
The violence of his retorts when he felt himself injured 
and his capacity for giving offence even when he was not 
directly provoked, begot a resentment in his adversaries 
which blinded them to an appreciation of his genuine worth. 
At best they might have assented, after his death, to the 
sublime pity with which Carlyle, from his spiritual altitudes, 
moraUzed upon his struggles. " How many a poor Hazlitt 
must wander on God's verdant earth, like the Unblest on 
burning deserts ; passionately dig wells, and draw up only 
the dry quicksand; believe that he is seeking Truth, yet 
only wrestle among endless Sophisms, doing desperate 
battle as with spectre-hosts ; and die and make no sign ! " ^^ 
We must appeal to the issue to determine whether Haz- 
litt's battle was altogether against spectre-hosts, and whether 
in his quest for truth and beauty he has drawn up nothing 
but quicksand. But at least Carlyle's expression recognizes 

^^ Characteristics, CCCVII. 

'* " Characteristics," in Carlyle's Critical and Miscellaneous Es*^ 
says (Chapman and Hall, 1898), III, 32. 



xxxii Introduction 

the earnestness of his purpose and the bravery with which 
he maintained the conflict. 

Hazlitt gave himself freely and without reserve to his 
reader. By his side Leigh Hunt appears affected, De 
Quincey theatrical, Lamb — let us say discreet. Affectation 
and discretion were equally aHen to Hazlitt's nature, as 
they concerned either his personal conduct or his literary 
exercises. In regard to every impression, every prejudice, 
every stray thought that struggled into consciousness, his 
practice was, to use his own favorite quotation, 

" To pour out all as plain 
As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne." 

He has drifted far from the tradition of Addison and 
Steele with which his contemporaries sought to associate 
him. There was nothing in him of the courtier-like grace 
employed in the good-humored reproof of unimportant 
vices, of the indulgent, condescending admonition to the 
'' gentle reader," particularly of the fair sex. In Hazlitt's 
hands the essay was an instrument for the expression of 
serious thought and virile passion. He lacked indeed the 
temperamental balance of Lamb. His insight into human 
nature was intellectual rather than sympathetic. Though 
as a philosopher he understood that the web of life is of 
a mingled yarn, he has given us none of those rare glimpses 
of laughter ending in tears or of tears subsiding in a tender 
smile which are the sources of Lamb's depth and his charm. 
The same thing is true of his humor. He relished heartily 
its appearance in others and had a most wholesome laugh ; 
but in himself there is no real merriment, only an ironic 
realization of the contrasts of life. When he writes, the 
smile which sometimes seeks to overpower the grim fixity 
of his features, is frozen before it can emerge to the sur- 
face. He lacks all the ingratiating arts which make a 



Introduction xxxiii 

writer beloved. But if one enjoys a keen student of the 
intricacies of character, a bold and candid critic of human 
imperfections, a stimulating companion full of original ideas 
and deep feelings, he will find in Hazlitt an inexhaustible 
source of instruction and delight. Hazlitt has long ap- 
pealed to men of vigorous character and acute intellect, 
men like Landor, Froude, Walter Bagehot, Robert Louis 
Stevenson, and Ernest Henley, who have either proclaimed 
his praise or flattered him with imitation. By the friend 
Vv'ho knew him longest and was better qualified than any 
other to speak of him, he has been pronounced as " in his 
natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits 
breathing." ^* 

n 

The discovery in the seventeenth century of the Greek 
treatise '' On the Sublime," attributed to Longinus, with its 
inspired appreciation of the great passages in Greek lit- 
erature so different from the analytic manner of Aristotle, 
gave a decided impulse to English criticism. It was at the 
same time that English prose, under the influence of French 
models, w^as developing a more familiar tone than it had 
hitherto been acquainted with. The union of the enthusiasm 
of Longinus with this moderated French prose resulted in 
the graceful prefaces of Dryden, which remained un- 
matched for more than a century. The Longinian fire, 
breathed upon too b}' the genius of Shakespeare, preserved 
the eighteenth century from congealing into the utter 
formalism of pseudo-xA.ristotelian authority. Though they 
did not produce an even warmth over the whole surface, 
the flames are observed darting through the crust even 
where the crust seems thickest. It is significant that Dr. 

^* " Letter of Elia to Robert Southey," Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, 
I, 22,2,. 



xxxiv Introduction 

Johnson should exclaim with admiration at the criticism of 
Dryden, not because Dryden judged according to rules but 
because his was the criticism of a poet. And he singles 
out as the best example of such criticism the well-known 
appreciation of Shakespeare, the very passage which Haz- 
litt later quoted as '' the best character of Shakespeare 
that has ever been written." ^^ The high-priest of classi- 
cism wavered frequently in his allegiance to some of the 
sacred fetishes of his cult, and had enough grace, once 
at least, to speak with scorn of the '' cant of those who 
judged by principles rather than by perception." ^^ 

But to judge by perception is a comparatively rare ac- 
complishment, and so most critics continued to employ the 
foot-rule as if they were measuring flat surfaces, while 
occasionally going so far as to recognize the existence of 
certain mountain-peaks as " irregular beauties." In a more 
or less conscious distinction from the criticism of external 
rules there developed also during the eighteenth century 
what its representatives were pleased to call metaphysical 
criticism, to which we should now probably apply the term 
psychological. This consisted in explaining poetic effects 
by reference to strictly mental processes in a tone of calm 
analysis eminently suited to the rationalistic temper of the 
age. It methodically traced the sources of grandeur or 
of pathos or of humor, and then illustrated its generaliza- 
tion by the practice of the poets. It could thereby pride 
itself on going back of the rules to the fundamental laws 
of human nature. Kames's Elements of Criticism, written 
in 1 761, became a work of standard reference, though it 
did not impose on the great critics. In commending it 
Dr. Johnson was careful to remark, " I do not mean that 
he has taught us anything; but he has told us old things 

^' " On Criticism," in Table Talk. 

^^ Life of Pope, Johnson's Lives, ed. Birkbeck Hill, IV, 248. 



Introduction xxxv 

in a new way." ^^ But in general Karnes was considered 
a safer guide than the enthusiastic Longinus, who through- 
out the century was looked upon with distrust. "Instead 
of shewing for what reason a sentiment or image is sub- 
lime, and discovering the secret power by which they affect 
a reader with pleasure, he is ever intent on producing 
something sublime himself, and strokes of his own elo- 
quence." So runs the complaint of Joseph Warton.^^ The 
distrust was not without ground. The danger that the 
method of Longinus in the hands of ungifted writers would 
become a cloak for critical ignorance and degenerate into 
empty bluster was already apparent.^^ Only rarely was 
there a reader who could distinguish between the false and 
the true application of the method. Gibbon did it in a 
passage which impressed itself upon the younger critics 
of Hazlitt's generation. " I was acquainted only with two 
ways of criticising a beautiful passage: the one, to shew, 
by an exact anatomy of it, the distinct beauties of it, and 
whence they sprung; the other, an idle exclamation, or 
a general encomium, which leaves nothing behind it. 
Longinus has shewn me that there is a third. He tells me 
his own feelings upon reading it ; and tells them with such 
energy, that he communicates them." ^^ That vital ele- 
ment, the commentator's power of communicating his own 
feelings, constituting as it does the difference between 
phrase-making and valuable criticism, did not become prom- 
inent in English literature before the nineteenth century. 

The official criticism of the early nineteenth century as 
represented by the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, de- 

" Boswell's Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, II, 89. 

^* Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, I, 170. 

'" See an essay by John Foster on " Poetical Criticism," in 
Critical Essays, ed. Bohn, I, 144. 

*" Gibbon's Journal, October 3, 1762. Miscellaneous Works, ed. 
1814, V, 263. 



xxxvi Introduction 

rives its descent directly from the eighteenth. Whatever 
the Government might have thought of the poHtics of the 
Edinburgh, its Hterary outlook remained unexceptionably 
orthodox. Jeffrey's '' Essay on Beauty " is a direct copy 
of AHson's '' Essay on Taste." Much as Dr. Johnson in 
the preceding age, Jeffrey prided himself on the moral 
tendency of his criticism — a moraHty which consisted in 
censuring the life of Burns and in exalting the virtuous 
insipidities of Maria Edgeworth's tales as it might have 
been done by any faithful minister of the gospel. To be 
sure he cannot be said to have held tenaciously to the 
old set of canons. Though he stanchly withstood the 
new-fangled poetic practices of Wordsworth and of Southey, 
he bowed before the great popularity of Scott and Byron, 
even at the cost of some of his favorite maxims. In his 
writings the solvents of the older criticism are best seen 
at work. Jeffrey both by instinct and training was a 
lawyer, and his position at the head of the most respected 
periodical formed a natural temptation to a dictatorial 
manner. He was a judge who tried to uphold the literary 
constitution but wavered in the face of a strong popular 
opposition. When the support of precedent failed him, 
he remained without any firm conviction of his own. While 
his poetic taste was quite adequate to the appreciation of 
a Samuel Rogers or a Barry Cornwall, it was incomparably 
futile in the perception of a Wordsworth or a Shelley. In 
a passage composed at the end of his long editorial career 
in 1829, he unconsciously announced his own extinction 
as*a critic : 

" Since the beginning of our critical career, we have 
seen a vast deal of beautiful poetry pass into oblivion, in 
spite of our feeble efforts to recall or retain it in remem- 
brance. The tuneful quartos of Southey are already little 
better than lumber: — and the rich melodies of Keats and 



Introduction xxxvii 

Shelley, — and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth, — 
and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the 
field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his 
poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading 
into distance and dimness, except where they have been 
married to immortal music; and the blazing star of Byron 
himself is receding from its place of pride. We need say 
nothing of Milman, and Croly, and Atherstone, and Hood, 
and a legion of others, who, with no ordinary gifts of 
taste and fancy, have not so properly survived their fame, 
as been excluded by some hard fatality, from what seemed 
their just inheritance. The two who have the longest with- 
stood this rapid withering of the laurel, and with the 
least marks of decay on their branches, are Rogers and 
Campbell ; neither of them, it may be remarked, voluminous 
writers, and both distinguished rather for the fine taste 
and consummate elegance of their writings, than for that 
fiery passion, and disdainful vehemence, which seemed for 
a time to be so much more in favour with the public." *^ 

But the authority of Jeffrey did not long remain un- 
challenged. His unfortunate '' This will never do " be- 
came a by-word among the younger writers who were 
gradually awaking to the realization of a new spirit in 
criticism. The protest against the methods of the dic- 
tatorial quarterlies found expression in the two brilliant 
monthly periodicals, Blackwood's and the London Maga- 
zine, founded respectively in 1817 and 1820. In these no 
opportunity was neglected to thrust at the inflated pre- 
tensions of the established reviews, and, though the animus 
of rivalry might be suspected of playing its part, the blows 
usually struck home. There is an air of absolute finality 
about Lockhart's " Remarks on the Periodical Criticism of 

" Review of Mrs. Hemans's Poems, Edinburgh Review, October, 
1829. Jeffrey's Works, III, 296. 



xxxviii Introduction 

England," and his characterization of Jeffrey in this article 
is a bold anticipation of the judgment of posterity.*^ The 
editor of the London Magazine ^^ writes with equal assur- 
ance, '' We must protest against considering the present 
taste as the standard of excellence, or the criticisms on 
poetry in the Edinburgh Review as the voice even of the 
present taste." The test of critical eligibihty in this age 
is an appreciation of Wordsworth and a proper understand- 
ing of Coleridge his prophet, and it is by virtue of what 
inspiration they drew from these oracles that John Lock- 
hart and John Scott became better qualified than Jeffrey 
or Gifford to form the literary opinions of the public. 

Coleridge more than any other person was responsible 
for bringing about a change in the attitude of literature 
toward criticism. As Hazlitt puts it with his inimitable 
vividness, he '' threw a great stone into the standing pool 
of criticism, which splashed some persons with the mud, but 
which gave a motion to the surface and a reverberation to 
the neighbouring echoes, which has not since subsided." ** 
Whether his ideas were borrowed from the Germans or 
evolved in his own brain, their importance for English 
literature remains the same. Coleridge's service lay in 
asserting and reasserting such fundamental principles as 
that a critical standard is something quite distinct from 
a set of external rules; that the traditional opposition be- 
tween genius and laws was based on a misconception as to 
the function of the critic; that all great genius necessarily 
worked in accordance with certain laws which it was the 
function of the critic to determine by a study of each par- 
ticular work of art; that art, being vital and organic, 
assumed different shapes at different epochs of human cul- 

*^ Blackwood's Magazine, II, 670-79. 

*'I, 281 (March, 1820). 

** Spirit of the Age, " William Godwin." 



Introduction xxxix 

ture ; that only the spirit of poetry remained constant, while 
its form was molded anew by each age in accordance with 
the demands of its own life ; that it was no more reason- 
able to judge Shakespeare's plays by the practice of Sopho- 
cles than to judge sculpture by the rules of painting. " O! 
few have there been among critics, who have followed with 
the eye of their imagination the imperishable yet ever 
wandering spirit of poetry through its various metempsy- 
choses; or who have rejoiced with the light of clear per- 
ception at beholding with each new birth, with each rare 
avatar^ the human race frame to itself a new body, by 
assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new cir- 
cumstances, and work for itself new organs of power appro- 
priate to the new sphere of its motion and activity." *^ 
This rare grasp of general principles was combined in 
Coleridge with poetic vision and a declamatory eloquence 
which enabled him to seize on the more ardent and open- 
minded men of letters and to determine their critical view- 
point. 

William Hazlitt was among the earliest to fall under 
Coleridge's spell. Just how much he owed to Coleridge 
beyond the initial impulse it is impossible to prove, because 
so much of the latter's criticism was expressed during 
improvised monologues at the informal meetings of friends, 
or in lectures of which only fragmentary notes remain. At 
any rate, while Coleridge's chief distinction lay in the 
enunciation of general principles, Hazlitt's practice, in so 
far as it took account of these general principles at all, 
assumed their existence, and displayed its strength in con- 
crete judgments of individual literary works. His criticism 
may be said to imply at every step the existence of Cole- 
ridge's, or to rise like an elegant superstructure on the solid 
foundation which the other had laid. Hazlitt communi- 
" Works, ed. Shedd, IV, 35- 



xl Introduction 

cated to the general public that love and appreciation of 
great literature which Coleridge inspired only in the few- 
elect. The latter, even more distinctly than a poet for 
poets, was a critic for critics^^^ and three generations have 
not succeeded in absorbing all his doctrines. But Hazlitt, 
with a delicate sensitiveness to the impressions of genius, 
with a boundless zest of poetic enjoyment, with a firm 
common sense to control his taste, and with a gift of orig- 
inal expression unequalled in his day, arrested the attention 
of the ordinary reader and made effective the principles 
which Coleridge with some vagueness had projected. To 
analyze in cold blood such living criticism as Hazlitt's may 
expose one to unflattering imputations, but the attempt may 
serve to bring to light what is so often overlooked, that 
Hazlitt's criticism is no random, irresponsible discharge of 
his sensibilities, but has an implicit basis of sound theory. 

In his History of Criticism, Mr. Saintsbury takes as his 
motto for the section on the early nineteenth century a 
sentence from Sainte-Beuve to the effect that nearly the 
whole art of the critic consists in knowing how to read a 
book with judgment and without ceasing to relish it.*^ We 
are almost ready to believe that the French critic, in the 
significant choice of the words judgment and relish, is con- 
sciously summarizing the method of Hazlitt, the more so 
as he elsewhere explicitly confesses a sympathy with the 
English critic.*^ Hazlitt has indeed himself characterized 
his art in some such terms. In one of his lectures he 
modestly describes his undertaking " merely to read over 
a set of authors with the audience, as I would do with 

*^ Mr. Saintsbury has applied this phrase to Hazlitt himself, but 
we prefer to transfer the honor. 

*^ " Savoir bien lire un livre en le jugeant chemin faisant, et sans 
cesser de le gouter, c'est presque tout I'art du critique." Chateau- 
briand et son Groupe Litteraire, I, 234. 

*^ Portraits Contemporains, "Sonnet d'Hazlitt," II, 515. 



Introduction xli 

a friend, to point out a favorite passage, to explain an 
objection; or if a remark or a theory occurs, to state it in 
illustration of the subject, but neither to tire him nor 
puzzle myself with pedantical rules and pragmatical formu- 
las of criticism that can do no good to anybody." *^ This 
sounds dangerously like dilettantism. It suggests the 
method of what in our day is called impressionism, one of 
the most delightful forms of literary entertainment when 
practiced by a master .of literature. The impressionist's 
aim is to record whatever impinges on his brain, and 
though with a writer of fine discernment it is sure to be 
productive of exquisite results, as criticism it is under- 
mined by the impressionist's assumption that every appre- 
ciation is made valid by the very fact of its existence. But 
this was scarcely Hazlitt's idea of criticism. Against uni- 
versal suffrage in matters literary he would have been 
among the first to protest. We might almost imagine we 
were listening to some orthodox theorist of the eighteenth 
century when -we hear him declaring that the object of 
taste " must be that, not which does, but which would 
please universally, supposing all men to have paid an equal 
attention to any subject and to have an equal relish for it, 
which can only be guessed at by the imperfect and yet more 
than casual agreement among those who have done so from 
choice and feeling." ^^ Though not the surest kind of clue, 
this indicates at least that HazHtt's rejection of "pedantical 
rules and pragmatical formulas " was not equivalent to 
a declaration of anarchy. 

For Hazlitt the assertion of individual taste meant eman- 
cipation from arbitrary codes and an opportunity to em- 
brace a compass as wide as the range of literary excellence. 
Realizing that every reader, even the professed critic, is 

*" Age of Elizabeth, " On Miscellaneous Poems," V, 301. 
'' " Thoughts on Taste," XI, 460. 



xlii Introduction 

hemmed in by certain prejudices arising from his tempera- 
ment, his education, his environment, he was unwilHng to 
pledge his trust to any school or fashion of criticism. The 
favorite oppositions of his generation — Shakespeare and 
Pope, Fielding and Richardson, EngHsh poetry and French 
— had no meaning for him. He was glad to enjoy each 
in its kind. " The language of taste and moderation is, 
/ prefer this, because it is best to me; the language of 
dogmatism and intolerance is. Because I prefer it, it is best 
in itself, and I zvill allow no one else to be of a different 
opinion'' ^^ This passage, in connection with the one last 
quoted, may be considered as fixing the limits within which 
Hazlitt gave scope to personal preference. The sum of 
his literary judgments reveals a taste for a greater variety 
of the works of genius than is displayed by any contem- 
porary, and the absence of '' a catholic and many-sided 
sympathy " ^^ is one of the last imputations that should 
have been brought against him. His criticism has limita- 
tions, but not such as are due to a narrowness of literary 
perception. 

Even Hazlitt's shortcomings may frequently be turned to 
his glory as a critic. The most remarkable thing about his 
violent political prejudices is the success with which he 
dissociated his literary estimates from them. Such a serious 
limitation in a critic as deficiency of reading in his case 
only raises our astonishment at the sureness of instinct 
which enabled him to pronounce unerringly on the scantest 
information. Never was there a critic of nearly equal pre- 
tensions who had as little of the scholar's equipment. If, 
as he tells us, he applied himself too closely to his studies 
at a certain period in his youth,^^ he atoned for it by his 

" Conversations of Northcote, VI, 457. 
®^ Cf. Herford : Age of Wordsworth, p. 51. 
'' " On the Conduct of Life," XII, 427. 



Introduction xliii 

neglect of books in later life.^* A desultory education had 
left him without that intimacy with the classics which be- 
longed of right to every cultivated Englishman. His al- 
lusions to the Greek and Latin writers are in the most 
general terms, but with a note of reverence which did not 
enter into his speech concerning even Shakespeare. " I 
would have you learn Latin (he is writing to his son) 
because there is an atmosphere round this sort of classical 
ground, to which that of actual life is gross and vulgar." ^^ 
His knowledge of Italian was no more thorough, though 
here he was more nearly on a level with his contemporaries. 
For Boccaccio indeed he showed an intense afifection, and 
he could write intelligently, if not deeply, concerning Dante 
and Ariosto and Tasso.^® With French he naturally had 
a wider acquaintance, but still nothing beyond the reach 
of the very general reader. The notable point is that he 
refrains from passing judgment on the entire body of 
French poetry because it is unlike English poetry. He is 
not infected with the wilful provincialism of Lamb nor 
with the spirit of John Bullishness which seriously pro- 
claims in its rivals " equally a want of books and men." ^^ 
" We may be sure of this," says Hazlitt, *' that when we 
see nothing but grossness and barbarism, or insipidity and 
verbiage in a writer that is the God of a nation's idolatry, 
it is we and not they who want true taste and feeling." ^^ 
Having this wholesome counsel ever before him, he can 
be more generously appreciative of the genius of Moliere, 
more justly discerning in his analysis of the spirit of 



^*Patmore: My Friends and Acquaintances, III, 122. 
'' " On the Conduct of Life," XII, 428. See also the paper " On 
the Study of the Classics," in the Round Table. 
^^ See a note to p. 329. 

"See Wordsworth's sonnet, "Great men have been among us." 
^* " On Criticism," in Table Talk. 



xliv Introduction 

Rousseau,^^ and more free of the puritanical clatter against 
Voltaire than any of his fellow-critics. With German lit- 
erature his famiHarity was bounded on the one hand by 
Schiller's " Robbers," on the other by the first part of 
'' Faust," the entire gap between these being filled by the 
popular versions of Kotzebue's plays and Mme. de Stael's 
book on Germany. Yet he dared to write a character of 
the German people which is almost worth quoting.^^ 

In English his range of reading was correspondingly 
narrow. Such a piece of waywardness as his enthusiasm 
for John Buncle,^^ derived no doubt from Lamb, is 
unique. Broadly speaking, he prefers to accept the estab- 
lished canon and approaches new discoveries with a deep 
distrust. He is very little concerned with writers of the 
second order, and in his Lecture on the Living Poets he 
shocked his audience unspeakably, when he came to the 
name of Hannah More, by merely remarking, " She has 
written a great deal which I have never read." He looked 
upon most living writers through the eyes of the somewhat 
jaded reviewer, who, though susceptible to a romantic thrill 
from one or the other, is usually on his guard against spuri- 
ous blandishments and reluctant to admit the claims of 
new pretenders. Even in poets of the first rank he slurred 
over a great deal; but what he loved he dwelt on with 
a kind of rapt inspiration until it became his second nature, 
its spirit and its language fused intimately with his own. 



°* " He is the most illuminating and the most thoughtful of all 
Rousseau's early English critics. . . . His essay ' On the Character 
of Rousseau ' was not surpassed, or approached, as a study of the 
great writer until the appearance of Lord Morley's monograph 
nearly sixty years afterwards." E. Gosse : Fortnightly Review, July, 
1912, p. 30. 

"" In the review of Schlegel's Lectures on the Drama, Works, 
X, 78. 

" See the paper on "John Buncle," in the Round Table. 



Introduction xlv 

This revolutionist in politics was a jealous aristocrat in 
the domains of art, and this admission does not impair 
our earlier assertion of his openness to a greater variety 
of imxpressions than any of his contemporaries in criticism. 
Hazlitt's professed indifference to system is probably due 
as much to lack of deep reading as to romantic impatience 
of restraint. When he declared that it was beyond his 
powers " to condense and combine all the facts relating to 
a subject " ^- or that " he had no head for arrangement," ^^ 
it was only because he did not happen to be a master of 
the facts which required combination or arrangement. For 
he did have an unusual gift for penetrating to the core of 
a subject and tearing out the heart of its mystery; in fact, 
his power of concrete literary generalization was in his age 
unmatched. To reveal the distinctive virtue of a literary 
form, to characterize the sources of weakness or of strength 
in a new or a by-gone fashion of poetry, to analyze accu- 
rately the forces impelling a whole mighty age — these 
things, requiring a deep and steady concentration of mind, 
are among his most solid achievements. In a paragraph he 
distils for us the essence of what is picturesque and worth 
dwelling on in the comedy of the Restoration. In a page 
he triumphantly establishes the boundary-line between the 
poetry of art and nature — Pope and Shakespeare — which to 
the present day remains as a clear guide, while at the same 
time Campbell and Byron and Bowles are filling the period- 
icals with protracted and often irrelevant arguments on 
one side or the other which only the critically curious now 
venture to look into. In the space of a single lecture he 
takes a sweeping view of all the great movements which 
gave vitality and grandeur to the Elizabethan spirit and 
found a voice in its literature, so that in spite of his little 

"■ Correspondence of Macvey Napier, p. 21. 

*' " On the Pleasure of Painting," in Table Talk. 



xlvi Introduction 

learning he seems to have left nothing for his followers but 
to fill in his outline. The same keenness of discernment 
he applied casually in dissecting the genius of his own 
time. He associated the absence of drama with the French 
Revolution, its tendency to deal in abstractions and to re- 
gard everything in relation to man and not men — a tendency 
irreconcilable with dramatic literature, which is essentially 
individual and concrete.®* To be sure the eighteenth cen- 
tury before the Revolution was as void of drama as Haz- 
litt's generation, but what is true of the period which pro- 
duced Political Justice and the Edinburgh Review would 
hold equally of the time which produced the " Essay on 
Man " and the deistic controversy. He sometimes harshly 
exposes the weaker side of contemporary lyricism as a 
"mere effusion of natural sensibiHty," and he regrets the 
absence of " imaginary splendor and human passion " as of 
a glory departed.®^ But with all this he had the true his- 
torical sense. It breaks out most unmistakably when he 
says, " If literature in our day has taken this decided turn 
into a critical channel, is it not a presumptive proof that 
it ought to do so?"*^*^ Of the actual application of 
historical principles, which were just beginning to be 
realized in the study of literature, we find only a few faint 
traces in Hazlitt. Some remarks on the influence of climate 
and of religious and political institutions occur in his con- 
tributions to the Edinburgh, but occasionally their per- 
functory manner suggests the editorial pen of Jeffrey. 
Doubtless Hazlitt's discriminating judgment would have 
enabled him to excel in this field, had he been equipped 
with the necessary learning. 

It may also be a serious limitation of Hazlitt's that he 

®* Dramatic Essays, VIII, 415. 

*' " On Shakespeare and Milton," p. 44. 

««"The Periodical Press," X, 203. 



Introduction xlvii 

neglects questions of structure and design. Doubtless he 
was reacting against the jargon of the older criticism with 
its lifeless and monotonous repetitions about invention and 
fable and unity, giving nothing but the " superficial plan 
and elevation, as if a poem were a piece of formal archi- 
tecture." ^"^ In avoiding the study of the design of *' Para- 
dise Lost " or of the " Faerie Queene " he may have 
brought his criticism nearer to the popular taste; but he 
deliberately shut himself off from a vision of some of the 
higher reaches of poetic art, perhaps betraying thereby that 
lack of " imagination " with which he has sometimes been 
charged.*'^ His interpretation of an author is therefore 
occasionally in danger of becoming an appreciation of iso- 
lated characters, or scenes, or passages, as if he were actu- 
ally reading him over with his audience. But this is a 
limitation which Hazlitt shares with all the finer critics of 
his day. 

After all these shortcomings have been acknowledged, 
th£ permanence of Hazlitt's achievement appears only the 
more remarkable. It is clear that the gods made him 
critical. The two essential qualities of judgment and taste 
he seems to have possessed from the very beginning. It is 
impossible to trace in him any development of taste; his 
growth is but the succession of his literary experiences. 
One looks in vain for any of those errors of youth such 
as are met even in a Coleridge enamored of Bowles. What 
extravagance of tone Hazlitt displayed in his early criticism 
he carried with him to his last day. If any change is to 
be noted, it is in the growing keenness of his appreciation. 
The early maturity of his judicial powers is attested by 
the political and metaphysical tendency of his youthful 

^"^ " On Criticism," in Table Talk. 

®* Cf. " On Reading Old Books," pp. 338-9, where this charge is 
curiously echoed by Hazlitt himself. 



xlviii Introduction 

studies. His birth as a full-fledged critic awaited only the 
stirring of the springs of his eloquence, as is evident from 
the excellence of what is practically his first literary essay, 
the *' Character of Burke." 

No critic has approached books with so intense a passion 
as Hazlitt. That sentimental fondness for the volumes 
themselves, especially when enriched by the fragrance of 
antiquity, which gives so delicious a savor to the bookish- 
ness of Lamb, was in him conspicuously absent. For him 
books were only a more vivid aspect of fife itself. " Tom 
Jones/' he tells us, was the novel that first broke the spell 
of his daily tasks and made of the world " a dance through 
life, a perpetual gala-day." ^^ Keats could not have romped 
through the " Faerie Queene " with more spirit than did 
Hazlitt through the length and breadth of eighteenth cen- 
tury romance, and the young poet's awe before the majesty 
of Homer was hardly greater than that of the future critic 
when a Milton or a Wordsworth swam into his ken. This 
hot and eager interest, deprived of its outlet in the form 
of direct emulation, sought a vent in communicating itself 
to others and in making converts to its faith. So intimately 
• did Hazlitt feel the spell of a work of genius, that its 
life-blood was transfused into his own almost against his 
will. '' I wish," he exclaims, " I had never read the Emilius 
... I had better have formed myself on the model of 
Sir Fopling Flutter." '^^ He entered into the poet's creation 
with a sympathy amounting almost to poetic vision, and 
the ever-present sense of the reality of the artist's world 
led him to interpret literature primarily in relation to fife. 
The poetry of character and passion is what he regards of 
most essential interest. ^^ This point of view unintention- 
ally converts his familiar essays on life into a literary dis- 

'' Ibid., p. 337- '" Ibid., p. 340. 

'^ " On Shakespeare and Milton," p. 109. 



Introduction xlix 

course, and gives to his formal criticism the tone of a 
study of Hfe at its sources, raising it at once to the same 
level with creative literature. Though he nowhere em- 
ploys the now familiar formula of " literature and life," the 
lecture '' On Poetry in General " is largely an exposition 
of this outlook. 

Life in its entire compass is regarded as the rough ma- 
terial of literature, but it does not become literature until 
the artist's imagination, as with a divine ray, has pene- 
trated the mass and inspired it with an ideal existence. 
Among the numerous attempts of his contemporaries to 
define the creative faculty of the poet, this comparatively 
simple one of HazUtt's is worth noting. " This intuitive 
perception of the hidden analogies of things, or, as it may 
be called, this instinct of imagination, is perhaps what stamps 
the character of genius on the productions of art more than 
any other circumstance : for it works unconsciously, like 
nature, and receives its impressions from a kind of inspira- 
tion." '- It is this power that he has in mind when he says 
*' Poetry is infusing the same spirit in a number of things, 
or bathing them all as it were, in the same overflowing 
sense of delight." " It shows Hazlitt to have fully appre- 
hended the guiding principle of the new ideal of criticism 
which, looking upon the work of art as an act of original 
creation and not of mechanical composition, based its judg- 
ment on a direct sympathy with the artist's mind instead 
of resorting to a general rule. In the light of this prin- 
ciple he is enabled to avoid the pitfalls of a moralistic 
interpretation of literature and to decide the question as to 
the relative importance of substance and treatment with 
a certainty which seems to preclude the possibility of any 
other answer. 

" " The English Novelists," VIII, 109. 
""Thoughts on Taste," XI, 463. 



I Introduction 

It is not the dignity of the theme which constitutes the 
great work of art, for in that case a prose summary of 
the " Divine Comedy " would be as exalted as the original, 
and it would be necessary merely to know the subject of 
a poem in order to pass judgment upon it. A low or a 
trivial subject may be raised by the imagination of the 
artist who recognizes in it the elements of beauty or power. 
No definition of poetry can be worth anything which would 
exclude '' The Rape of the Lock " ; and Murillo's painting 
of " The Two Beggar Boys " is as much worth having '' as 
almost any picture in the world." "'^ " Yet it is not true 
that execution is everything, and the class or subject noth- 
ing. The highest subjects, equally well-executed (which, 
however, rarely happens), are the best." '^ Though each 
is perfect in its kind, there can be no difficulty in deciding 
the question of greatness between " King Lear " and *' The 
Comedy of Errors." " The greatest strength of genius is 
shewn in describing the strongest passions : for the power 
of imagination, in works of invention, must be in propor- 
tion to the force of the natural impressions, which are 
the subject of them." "'^ One also finds a test of relative 
values in the measure of fulness with which the work of 
art reflects the complex elements of life. If we estimate 
a tragedy of Shakespeare above one of Lillo or Moore, it 
is because " impassioned poetry is an emanation of the 
moral and intellectual part of our nature, as well as of the 
sensitive — of the desire to know, the will to act, and the 
power to feel ; and ought to appeal to these different parts 
of the constitution, in order to be perfect." '''^ 

In treating of the specific distinction of poetry Hazlitt 

'* " On Criticism," in Table Talk. 
" Ibid. 

''^Characters of Shakespeare, "Lear." 
''' " On Poetry in General," p. 258. 



Introduction li 

does not escape the usual difficulties. Taking his point 
of departure from Milton's " thoughts that voluntary move 
harmonious numbers," he defines poetry in a passage that 
satisfactorily anticipates the familiar one of Carlyle, as 
" the music of language answering to the music of the 
mind. . . . Wherever any object takes such a hold of the 
mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting 
the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a sentiment of 
enthusiasm ; — wherever a movement of imagination or 
passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to 
prolong or repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into 
accord with it, and to give the same movement of harmony, 
sustained and continuous, or gradually varied according to 
the occasion, to the sounds that express it — this is poetry. 
The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous ; the 
musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. 
There is a near connection between music and deep-rooted 
passion." '^^ In this mystical direction a definition could 
go no further, but like nearly all writers and speakers Haz- 
litt is inclined to use the word poetry in a variety of more 
or less connected meanings, ^^ ordinarily legitimate enough, 
but somewhat embarrassing when it is a question of defini- 
tion. " That which lifts the spirit above the earth, which 
draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, 
is," he says, '' poetry in kind, and generally fit to become 
so in name, by ' being married to immortal verse.' " ^^ If 
it is true that Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson 
Crusoe possess the " essence and the power of poetry " 

^^ " On Poetry in General," p. 266. 

" Hazlitt defends himself on the ground that " the word has these 
three distinct meanings in the English language, that is, it signifies 
the composition produced, the state of mind or faculty producing it, 
and, in certain cases, the subject-matter proper to call forth that 
state of mind." Letter to Giiford, I, 396. 

*° " On Poetry in General," pp. 268-9. 



lii Introduction 

and require only the addition of verse to become abso- 
lutely so,^^ then the musical expression is only a factitious 
ornament, to be added or removed at the caprice of the 
writer. But Hazlitt is careful to declare that verse does 
not make the whole difference between poetry and prose, 
leaving 'the whole question as vaguely suspended as ever.^^ 
Bare theorizing, according to his own confession, was 
no favorite pursuit with Hazlitt. He enjoyed himself 
much more in the analysis of an individual author or his 
work. His aversion to literary cant, his love of " saying 
things that are his own in a way of his own," were here 
most in evidence. What he says of Milton might appro- 
priately be applied to himself, that he formed the most 
intense conception of things and then embodied them by 
a single stroke of his pen. In a phrase or in a sentence 
he stamped the character of an author indelibly, and, 
enemy to commonplace though he was, became a cause of 
commonplace in others. No matter how much might 
already have been written on a subject (and Hazlitt did 
not make a practice of celebrating neglected obscurity) 
his own view stood out fresh and clear, and yet his judg- 
ments were never eccentric. He wrestled with a writer's 
thoughts, absorbed his most passionate feelings, and mir- 
rored back his most exquisite perceptions with '' all the 
color, the light and the shade." His 'fertility is more 
amazing than his intensity, for no critic of nearly equal rank 
has enriched English literature with so many valuable and 
enduring judgments on so great a variety of subjects. Dr. 
Johnson is by common consent the spokesman of the eigh- 
teenth century, or of its dominant class ; Coleridge and 

^^ Ibid., p. 268. 

*- Those interested in the perennial discussion of the relation of 
poetry to verse or metre would do well to read the recent interesting 
contribution to the subject by Professor Mackail in his Lectures on 
Poetry (Longmans, 1912). 



Introduction liii 

Lamb are entitled to the glory of revealing the literature 
between Spenser and Milton to English readers, and the 
former rendered the additional service of acting as the 
interpreter of Wordsworth. But to give an idea of Haz- 
litt's scope would require a summary of opinions embracing 
poetry from Chaucer and Spenser to Wordsworth and 
Byron, prose sacred and profane from Bacon and Jeremy 
Taylor to Burke and Edward Irving, the drama in its two 
flourishing periods, the familiar essay from Steele and 
Addison to Lamb and Leigh Hunt, the novel from Defoe 
to Sir AValter Scott. This does not begin to suggest Haz- 
litt's versatility. His own modest though somewhat over- 
alliterative words are that he has " at least glanced over 
a number of subjects — painting, poetry, prose, plays, poli- 
tics, parliamentary speakers, metaphysical lore, books, 
men, and things." ^^ 

The importance of Hazlitt's Shakespearian criticism is 
no longer open to question. Though Coleridge alluded to 
them slightingly as out-and-out imitations of Lamb,^* Haz- 
litt's dicta on the greatest English genius are equal in 
depth to Lamb's and far more numerous ; and while in 
profoundness and subtlety they fall short of the remarks 
of Coleridge himself, they surpass them in intensity and 
carrying power. To both of these men Hazlitt owed a 
great deal in his appreciation of Shakespeare, and perhaps 
even more to August W^ilhelm Schlegel, whose Lectures 
on Dramatic Literature he reviewed in 1815.^^ His al- 
lusions to Schlegel border on enthusiasm and he makes it 
a proud claim that he has done " more than any one except 
Schlegel to vindicate the Characters of Shakespeare's Plays 

*^ " On the Causes of Popular Opinion," XII, 320. 

®* Coleridge : Table Talk, Aug. 6, 1832. 

*^ Edinburgh Review, Feb., 1816. The nature of Hazlitt's debt to 
Coleridge, Lamb and Schlegel is to some extent illustrated in the 
notes to the present text. 



liv Introduction 

from the stigma of French criticism."^'' But' however 
great his obhgation, there was some point in the compli- 
ment of the German critic when he declared that Hazlitt 
had gone beyond him (I'avoit depasse) in his Shake- 
spearian opinions.®^ A few years later Heine maintained 
that the only significant commentator of Shakespeare pro- 
duced by England was William Hazlitt.^^ Coleridge's 
notes, it is to be remembered, were not at that time gen- 
erally accessible. 

Hazlitt's attitude toward Shakespeare was wholesomely 
on this side of idolatry. He did not make it an article 
of faith to admire everything that Shakespeare had written, 
and refused his praise to the poems and most of the son- 
nets. Even Schlegel and Coleridge could not persuade him 
to see beauties in what appeared to be blemishes, but in 
a general estimate of Shakespeare's all-embracing genius 
he conceived his faults to be " of just as much consequence 
as his bad spelling." ^^ He saw in him a genius who com- 
prehended all humanity, who represented it poetically in all 
its shades and varieties. He examined all the fine distinc- 
tions of character, he studied Shakespeare's manner of 
combining and contrasting them so as to produce a unity 
of tone above even the art of the classic unities. From 
the irresponsible comedy of Falstaff to the deepest tragic 
notes of Lear, the whole gamut of human emotions en- 
counters responsive chords in the critic's mind — the young 
love of Romeo and Juliet or the voluptuous abandonment 
of Antony and Cleopatra, the intellect of lago irresistibly 
impelled to malignant activity or Hamlet entangled in the 
coils of a fatal introspection. To the sheer poetry of 

*® "Whether Genius is Conscious of its Powers," in Plain Speaker. 

*^ Moore's Letters and Journals, May 21, 1821, III, 235. 

*^ Shakespeare's Mddchen und Frauen. 

®® Review of Schlegel's Lectures, Works, X, 11 1. 



Introduction Iv 

Shakespeare he is also acutely sensitive, to the soft moonlit 
atmosphere of the " Midsummernight's Dream," to the 
tender gloom of " Cymbeline," to the '* philosophic poetry " 
of " As You Like It." Some of his interpretations of iso- 
lated passages are hardly to be surpassed. He comments 
minutely and exquisitely on what he considers to be a touch- 
stone of poetic feeling, 

" Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty." ""^ 

And with what complete insight he translates a speech of 
Antony's : 

''This precarious state and the approaching dissolution 
of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue of 
Antony with Eros : 

'Antony. Eros, thou yet behold'st me? 

Eros. Ay, noble lord. 

Antony. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish ; 
A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion, 
A towered citadel, a pendant rock, 
A forked mountain, or blue promontory 
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world 
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs, 
They are black vesper's pageants. 

Eros. Ay, my lord. 

Antony. That which is now a horse, even with a thought 
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct 
As water is in water. 

Eros. It does, my lord. 

Antony. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is 
Even such a body,' etc. 

" This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces of poetry 
in Shakspeare. The splendour of the imagery, the sem- 
blance of reality, the lofty range of picturesque objects 
'""Poetry," XII, 339. 



Ivi Introduction 

hanging over the world, their evanescent nature, the total 
uncertainty of what is left behind, are just like the moulder- 
ing schemes of human greatness. It is finer than Cleo- 
patra's passionate lamentation over his fallen grandeur, be- 
cause it is more dim, unstable, unsubstantial." ^^ 

If an understanding of Shakespeare in HazHtt's day may 
be taken as a measure of a critic's depth of insight, his 
attitude toward Shakespeare's fellow-dramatists will just 
as surely reveal his powers of discrimination. Lamb was 
often carried away by a pioneer's fervor and misled persons 
like Lowell, who, returning to Ford, late in life, found 
" that the greater part of what [he] once took on trust 
as precious was really paste and pinchbeck," and that as 
far as the celebrated closing scene in " The Broken Heart " 
was concerned, Charles Lamb's comment on it was " worth 
more than all Ford ever wrote." ^- Hazlitt's dispassionate 
sanity in this instance forms an instructive contrast : " Ex- 
cept the last scene of the Broken Heart (which I think 
extravagant — others may think it sublime, and be right) 
they [Ford's plays] are merely exercises of style and ef- 
fusion of wire-drawn sentiment." ^^ The same strength of 
judgment rendered Hazlitt proof against the excessive 
sentimentality in Beaumont and Fletcher and gave a dis- 
tinct value to his opinions even when they seemed to be 
wrong, which was not often. But in writing of Marlowe, 
of Dekker and of Webster, he spreads out all his sail to 
make a joyous run among the beauties in his course. 

And it is so with the rest of his criticism — throughout 
the same susceptibility to all that is true, or lofty, or re- 
fined, vigilantly controlled by a firm common sense, the 

®^ Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, "Antony and Cleopatra." 
^^ Lowell: Old English Dramatists. 

^^ Lecture on the Age of Elizabeth, " On Beaumont and Fletcher" 
V, 269. 



Introduction Ivii 

same stamp of originality unmistakably impressed on all. 
*' I like old opinions with new reasons," he once said to 
Northcote, " not new opinions without any." ^* But he did 
not hesitate to express a new opinion where the old one 
appeared to be unjust. His heretical preference of Steele 
over Addison has found more than one convert in latei 
days. On Spenser or Pope, on Fielding or Richardson, e 
is equally happy and unimprovable. In the opinion of Mr. 
Saintsbury, Hazlitt's general lecture on Elizabethan lit- 
erature, his treatment of the dramatists of the Restoration, 
of Pope, of the English Novelists, and of Cobbett have 
never been excelled; and who is better quahfied than Mr. 
Saintsbury by width of reading to express such an 
opinion ? ^^ 

Of Hazlitt's treatment of his own contemporaries an 
additional word needs to be said. No charge has been 
repeated more often than that of the inconsistency, per- 
versity, and utter unreliableness of his judgments on the 
writers of his day. To distinguish between the claims of 
living poets, particularly in an age of new ideas and 
changing forms, is a task which might test the powers of 
the most discerning critics, and in which perfection is 
hardly to be attained. Yet one may ask whether in the 
entire extent of Hazlitt's writing a great living genius has 
been turned into a mockery or a figurehead been set up 
for the admiration of posterity. Of his personal and po- 
litical antipathies enough has been said, but against literary 
orthodoxy his' only great sin is a harsh review of " Christa- 
bel." ^^ If in general we look at the age through Hazlitt's 
eyes, we shall see its literature dominated by the figures 

®* Conversation of Northcote, VI, 393. 
*' Essays in English Literature, Second Series, 159-161. 
®* There seems to be no reason for doubting Hazlitt's authorship 
of the article in the Examiner, See Works, XI, 580. 



Iviii Introduction 

of Wordsworth and Scott, the one regarded as the restorer 
of Hfe to poetry, the other as the creator or transcriber 
of a whole world of romance and humanity. Coleridge 
stands out prominently as the widest intellect of his age. 
Byron's poetry bulks very large, though it is not estimated 
as superlatively as in the criticism of our own day. It is 
a pity that Hazlitt never wrote formally of Keats, for his 
casual allusions indicate a deep enjoyment of the " rich 
beauties and the dim obscurities " of the " Eve of St. 
Agnes " ^' and an appreciation of the perfection of the 
great odes.^^ If he failed to give Shelley his full dues, he 
did not overlook his exquisite lyrical inspiration. He spoke 
of Shelley as a man of genius, but " ' all air,' disdaining 
the bars and ties of mortal mould ; " he praised him for 
*' single thoughts of great depth and force, single images 
of rare beauty, detached passages of extreme tenderness," 
and he rose to enthusiasm in commending his translations^ 
especially the scenes from Faust.^® He has been accused 
of writing a Spirit of the Age which omitted to give 
an account of Shelley and Keats, but in the title of the 
book consists his excuse. As it was not his idea to anticipate 
the decision of posterity but only to sketch the personalities 
who were in control of the public attention, he passed over 
the fin§r poets who were still neglected, and wrote instead 
about Campbell and Moore and Crabbe. It is sufficient 
praise for the critic that those of whom he has undertaken 
to treat stand irreversibly judged in his pages. He is gen- 
erous toward Campbell and Moore, who were both per- 
sonally hostile to him ; he is scrupulously honest toward 
Bentham, with whose system he had no sympathy. The 
concluding pages of his sketch of Southey, in view of that 

^'^^ William Gifford," in Spirit of the Age. 

"' Select British Poets. See Works, V, 378. 

'" " Shelley's Posthumous Poems," Works, X, 256 ff. 



Introduction lix 

poet's rancor against him, are almost defiant in their mag- 
nanimity. His adverse judgments, moreover, are as per- 
manent as his favorable ones. He pronounced the verdict 
against the naked realism of Crabbe's poetry, which per- 
sons like Jeffrey thought superior to Wordsworth's, and 
he pricked the bubble of Edward Irving's popularity while 
it was at its pitch of highest glory. If he was often bitter 
toward men whom he at other times eulogized, it was 
in the heat and hurry of journalistic publication in a period 
when blows were freely dealt and freely taken. If he 
sometimes censured even Wordsworth and Scott and grew 
impatient with Byron and Coleridge, it must be remem- 
bered that these men of genius had imperfections, and that 
the imperfections of men of genius are of far greater 
concern to their contemporaries than to posterity. Time 
dispels the mists and allows the gross matter to settle to 
the bottom. We now have Wordsworth in the selections 
of Matthew Arnold, we read the Waverley Novels with 
Lockhart's Life of Scott before us, and we render praise 
to Coleridge for what he has accomplished since his death. 
With none of these advantages, Hazlitt's performance 
seems remarkable enough. No contemporary with the ex- 
ception of Leigh Hunt displayed as wide a sympathy with 
the writers of that time, and Hazlitt so far surpasses Hunt 
in discrimination and strength, that he deserves to be called, 
strange as it may sound, the best contemporary judge of 
the literature of his age. 

It has already been suggested that much of Hazlitt's 
appeal as a critic rests on the force of his popular eloquence, 
so that a brief consideration of his prose is not in this con- 
nection out of place. " We may all be fine fellows," said 
Stevenson, '' but none of us can write like Hazlitt." To 
write a style that is easy yet incisive, lively and at the 
same time substantial, buoyant without being frothy, glit- 



Ix Introduction 

tering but with no tinsel frippery, a style combining the 
virtues of homeliness and picturesqueness, has been given 
to few mortals. Writing in a generation in which the 
standards of prose were conspicuously unsettled, when the 
most ambitious writers were seeking an escape from the 
frozen patterns of the eighteenth century in a restoration 
of the elaborate artifices of the seventeenth, when quaintness 
and ornateness were the evidence of a distinguished style, 
Hazlitt succeeded in preserving the note of famiHarity with- 
out fading into colorlessness or in any degree effacing his 
individuality. He cannot be counted among the masters 
of finished prose, he is as a matter of fact often very negli- 
gent,^°° but he developed the best model of an undiluted, 
sturdy, popular style that is to be found in the English 
language. 

Perhaps an adherence to the eighteenth century tradition 
of plainness is the most prominent characteristic of Hazlitt's 
prose. But his plainness is not precisely of the blunt type 
associated with Swift and Arbuthnot. It is modified by the 
Gallic tone of easy familiarity, by the ideal deemed appro- 
priate for dignified converse among educated people of the 
world. His periods are of the simplest construction and 
they are not methodically combined in the artificial patterns 
beloved of the eighteenth century followers of the plain 
style. Not that he altogether neglects the devices of 
parallelism and antithesis when he wishes to give epigram- 
matic point to his remarks, but he more generally develops 
his ideas in a series of easily flowing sentences which are 
as near as writing can be to '' the tone of lively and sensible 

^°° Hazlitt's syntax is often abbreviated, elliptical, and unregardful 
of book rules. Constructions like the following are not uncommon 
in his prose : " As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed 
all Europe. . . . As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth 
new powers from Mr. Liston's face." Lectures on the English 
Poets, "On Swift, Young," etc., V, 119, 120. 



Introduction Ixi 

conversation." It is impossible to match in the EngUsh 
essay such talk as Hazlitt reproduces in his accounts of the 
evenings at Lamb's room or of his meeting with Coleridge, 
in which high themes and spirited eloquence find spontane- 
ous and unaffected expression through the same medium 
as might be employed in a deliberate definition of the nature 
of poetry. The various sets of lectures are pitched in the 
same conversational key and are found adequate to convey- 
ing a notion of the grandeur of Milton as w^ell as of the 
familiarity of Lamb. 

Those who have praised Hazlitt's simplicity have often 
given the impression that his prose is a single-stringed 
instrument, and have failed to suggest the range comprised 
between the simple hammer-strokes of the essay on Cobbett 
and the magnificent diapason in which he unrolls the pan- 
orama of Coleridge's mind. In both passages there is the 
same sentence-norm. In the first, the periods, not bound 
by any connecting words, strike distinctly, sharply, with 
staccato abruptness. The movement is that of a clean- 
limbed wrestler struggling with confident energy to pin 
down a difficult opponent: 

" His principle is repulsion, his nature contradiction : he 
is made up of mere antipathies ; an Ishmaelite indeed, with- 
out a fellow. He is always playing at hunt'thc-slippcr in 
politics. He turns round upon whoever is next to him. 
The way to wean him from any opinion, and make him 
conceive an intolerable hatred against it, would be to place 
somebody near him who was perpetually dinning it in his 
ears. When he is in England, he does nothing but abuse 
the Boroughmongers, and laugh at the whole system : when 
he *is in America, he grows impatient of freedom and a 
republic. If he had staid there a little longer, he would 
have become a loyal and a loving subject of his Majesty 
King George IV. He lampooned the French Revolution 



Ixii Introduction 

when it was hailed as the dawn of liberty by millions: by 
the time it was brought into almost universal ill-odour by 
some means or other (partly no doubt by himself) he had 
turned, with one or two or three others, staunch Bona- 
partist. He is always of the militant, not of the trium- 
phant party : so far he bears a gallant show of magnanim- 
ity ; but his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp : it wants 
principle. For though he is not servile or mercenary, he 
is the victim of self-will. He must pull down and pull in 
pieces : it is n®t in his disposition to do otherwise. It is 
a pity; for with his great talents he might do great things, 
if he would go right forward to any useful object, make 
thorough-stitch work of any question, or join hand and 
heart with any principle. He changes his opinions as he 
does his friends, and much on the same account. He has 
no comfort in fixed principles : as soon as anything is settled 
in his own mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfac- 
tion but in the chase after truth, runs a question down, 
worries and kills it, then quits it like vermin, and starts 
some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him 
a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble 
yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault." ^^^ 

In the other passage tlie clauses and phrases follow in 
their natural order, but they are united by the simplest kind 
of connective device in an undistinguishable stream over 
which the reader is driven with a steady swell and fall, 
sometimes made breathlessly rapid by the succession of its 
uniformly measured word-groups, but delicately modulated 
here and there to provide restful pauses in the long onward 
career : 

" Next, he was engaged with Hartley's tribes of mind, 
* etherial braid, thought-woven,' — and he busied himself for 
a year or two with vibrations and vibratiuncles and the 
"" Spirit of the Age, " William Cobbett." 



Introduction Ixiii 

great law of association that binds all things in its mystic 
chain, and* the doctrine of Necessity (the mild teacher of 
Charity) and the Millennium, anticipative of a life to come 
— and he plunged deep into the controversy on Matter and 
Spirit, and, as an escape from Dr. Priestley's Materialism, 
where he felt himself imprisoned by the logician's spell, like 
Ariel in the cloven pine-tree, he became suddenly enam- 
oured of Bishop Berkeley's fairy-world, and used in all 
companies to build the universe, hke a brave poetical fiction, 
of fine words — and he was deep-read in Malebranche, and 
in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a huge pile of learning, 
unwieldly, enormous) and in Lord Brook's hieroglyphic the- 
ories, and in Bishop Butler's Sermons, and in the Duchess 
of Newcastle's fantastic folios, and in Clarke and South 
and Tillotson, and all the fine thinkers and masculine rea- 
soners of that age — and Leibnitz's Pre-established Har- 
mony reared its arch above his head, like the rainbow in 
the cloud, covenanting with the hopes of man— and then he 
fell plump, ten thousand fathoms down (but his wings saved 
him harmless) into the hortus siccus of Dissent" etc.^^^ 

The same style which glistens and sparkles in describing 
the fancy of Pope rises to an inspired chant with a clearly 
defined cadence at the recollection of the past glory of 
Coleridge : 

" He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius at that 
time had angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked 
on for ever ; and you wished him to talk on for ever. His 
thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort ; but 
as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of 
his imagination lifted him from off his feet. His voice 
rolled on the ear like the pealing organ, and its sound 
alone was the music of thought. His mind was clothed 
with wings; and raised on them, he Hfted philosophy to 
^"^ See pp. 210-213. 



Ixiv Introduction 

heaven. In his descriptions, you then saw the progress of 
human happiness and Hberty in bright and never-ending 
succession, Hke the steps of Jacob's ladder, with airy shapes 
ascending and descending, and with the voice of God at 
the top of the ladder. And shall I, who heard him then, 
listen to him now ? Not I ! That spell is broke ; that time 
is gone for ever; that voice is heard no more: but still 
the recollection comes rushing by with thoughts of long- 
past years, and rings in my ears with neyer-dying sound." ^^^ 
It would take much space to illustrate all the notes to 
which HazHtt's voice responds — the pithy epigram of the 
Characteristics, the Chesterfieldian grace in his advice " On 
the Conduct of Life," the palpitating movement with which 
he gives expression to his keen enjoyment of his sensual 
or intellectual existence, and the subdued solemnity of his 
reveries which sometimes remind us that he was writing 
in an age which had rediscovered Sir Thomas Browne. 
The following sentence proves how accurately he could 
catch the rhythm of the seventeenth century. ** That we 
should wear out by slow stages, and dwindle at last into 
nothing, is not wonderful, when even in our prime our 
strongest impressions leave little trace but for the moment^ 
and we are the creatures of petty circumstance." ^^* Other 
passages in the same essay echo this manner only less 
strikingly : 

^"^ " On the Living Poets," in Lectures on the English Poets, 
V, 167. 

^"* This is the form of the passage as published in the Literary 
Remains (1836). That Hazlitt did not attain effects like this 
offhand, is evident from the comparative feebleness of the original 
sound of the passage in the Monthly Magazine: "That we should 
thus in a manner outlive ourselves, and dwindle imperceptibly into 
nothing, is not surprising, when even in our prime the strongest 
impressions leave so little traces of themselves behind, and the 
last object is driven out by the succeeding one." " On the Feeling 
of Immortality in Youth," Works, XII, 160. 



Introduction Ixv 

" Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most 
mysterious. No wonder when it is first granted to us, that 
our gratitude, our admiration, and our dehght, should pre- 
vent us from reflecting on our own nothingness, or from 
thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and strongest 
impressions are borrowed from the mighty scene that is 
opened to us, and we unconsciously transfer its durability as 
well as its splendour to ourselves. So newly found we 
cannot think of parting with it yet, or at least put ofif 
that consideration sine die. Like a rustic at a fair, we are 
full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of 
going home, or that it will soon be night. We know our 
existence only by ourselves, and confound our knowledge 
with the objects of it. We and nature are therefore one. 
Otherwise the illusion, the 'feast of. reason and the flow 
of soul,' to which we are invited, is a mockery and a 
cruel insult. We do not go from a play till the last act 
is ended, and the lights are about to be extinguished. But 
the fairy face of nature still shines on: shall we be called 
away before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had 
a glimpse of what is going on? Like children, our step- 
mother nature holds us up to see the raree-show of the 
universe, and then, as if we were a burden to her to sup- 
port, lets us fall down agan. Yet what brave sublunary 
things does not this pageant present, like a ball or fete of 
the universe ! " ^^^ 

In Hazlitt's vocabulary there is nothing striking unless 
it be the scrupulousness with which he avoids the danger 
of commonplaceness and of pedantry. It is easy to forget 
that the transparent obviousness of his style was attained 
only after many years of groping. We may well believe 



^"^ This passage also shows alterations from the first form. Cf. 
XII, 152. 



Ixvi Introduction 

that " there is a research in the choice of a plain, as well 
as of an ornamental or learned style; and, in fact, a great 
deal more." ^^® Though he did not go in pursuit of the 
word to the extent of some later refiners of style, he had 
a clear realization that the appropriate word w^as what 
chiefly gave vitality to writing.^^^ For this reason he con- 
stantly denounced Johnsonese with its polysyllabic Latin 
words which reduced language to abstract generalization. 
His own vocabulary is concrete and vivid, and of a purity 
which makes one wonder how even the Quarterly Review 
could have ventured to apply to him the epithet " slang- 
whanger." 

In spite of all that may be said in honor of the un- 
adorned style of composition, writers have ever found that 
even in prose ideas are most forcibly conveyed by means 
of imagery. Hazlitt, it should be remembered, was an 
ardent admirer of the picturesque qualities in the prose of 
Burke, the most brilliant of the eighteenth century. In 
recalling his first reading of Burke^ he tells how he de- 
spaired of emulating his felicities. But whether by dint 
of meditating over Burke or by the native vigor of his 
fancy, Hazlitt learned to write as boldly and as brilliantly 
as the great orator. As a rule his rhetorical passages are 
not deliberately contrived, in the manner for example of 

^"'Lectures on the English Poets. ''On Swift, Young, etc.," 
V, 104. See also the paper in Table Talk on " Familiar Style." 

"^ " I grant thus much, that it is in vain to seek for the word 
we want, or endeavour to get at it second-hand, or as a paraphrase 
on some other word — it must come of itself, or arise out of an 
immediate impression or lively intuition of the subject; that is, the 
proper word must be suggested immediately by the thoughts, but 
it need not be presented as soon as called for. . . . Proper ex- 
pressions rise to the surface from the heat and fermentation of 
the mind, like bubbles on an agitated stream. It is this which pro- 
duces a clear and sparkling style." " On Application to Study," in 
Plain Speaker. 



Introduction Ixvii 

his esteemed contemporary De Quincey. His tropes and 
images rise directly out of his subject or his feelings. 
Instead of dissecting the qualities of a character or a 
work of art, he translates its tone and its spirit as closely 
as language will permit. That is why his criticism, like 
Lamb's or that of the master of this form, Longinus, is 
itself first-rate literature, recreating the impression of a 
masterpiece and sometimes even going beyond it. 

Of his picturesque quality examples enough may be 
found in the present volume, yet one cannot forbear to 
add a few illustrations at this point. There is his irre- 
sistible comparison of Cobbett in his political inconsistency 
to '' a young and lusty bridegroom, that divorces a favorite 
speculation every morning, and marries a new one every 
night. He is not wedded to his notions, not he. He has 
not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions." ^"^ There 
is a good deal more than mere wit in the analogy between 
Godwin's mechanical laboriousness and " an eight-day 
clock that must be wound up long before it can strike." ^^^ 
And there is real grandeur in his description of Fame : 
'' Fame is the sound which the stream of high thoughts, 
carried down to future ages, makes as it flows — deep, dis- 
tant, murmuring evermore like the waters of the mighty 
ocean. He who has ears truly touched to this music, is 
in a manner deaf to the voice of popularity." ^^^ In repre- 
senting the brilliant hues of Restoration comedy, he allows 
an even freer play to his fancy : 

" In turning over the pages of the best comedies, we are 
almost transported to another world, and escape from this 
dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and 
humour. The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents 

'"' Spirit of the Age, " Mr. Cobbett." 

'"Mbid., "William Godwin." 

*""0n the Living Poets," Lectures on English Poets, V, 144. 



Ixviii Introduction 

itself, as on the canvas of Watteaii. We are admitted 
behind the scenes Hke spectators at court, on a levee or 
birthday; but it is the court, the gala-day of wit and 
pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II. ! What an air 
breathes from the name ! what a rustling of silks and wav- 
ing of plumes ! what a sparkling of diamond ear-rings and 
shoe-buckles! What bright eyes, (Ah, those were Waller's 
Sacharissa's as she passed!) what killing looks and grace- 
ful motions ! How the faces of the whole ring are dressed 
in smiles ! how the repartee goes round ! how wit and folly, 
elegance and awkward imitation of it, set one another off! 
Happy^ thoughtless age, when kings and nobles led .purely 
ornamental lives ; when the utmost stretch of a morning's 
study went no farther than the choice of a sword-knot, or 
the adjustment of a side-curl; when the soul spoke out in 
all the pleasing eloquence of dress; and beaux and belles, 
enamoured of themselves in one another's follies, fluttered 
like gilded butterflies, in giddy mazes, through the walks of 
St James's Park!"iii 

Sometimes, it is true, he allows his spirits to run away 
with his judgment, although in such instances the manner is 
so obviously exaggerated as to suggest deliberate mimicry. 
His account of the tawdry sentimentality of Moore's poetry 
sounds like pure travesty : 

'' His verse is Hke a shower of beauty ; a dance of images ; 
a stream of music; or like the spray of the water-fall, 
tinged by the morning-beam with rosy light. The char- 
acteristic distinction of our author's style is this continuous 
and incessant flow of voluptuous thoughts and shining allu- 
sions. He ought to write with a crystal pen on silver 
paper. His subject is set off by a dazzling veil of poetic 
diction, like a wreath of flowers gemmed with innumerous 

^^^ Lectures on the Comic Writers, " On Wycherley, Congreve, 
etc.," VIII, 70. 



Introduction Ixix 

dew-drops, that weep, tremble, and glitter in liquid softness 
and pearly light, while. tHe song of birds ravishes the ear, 
and languid odours breathe around, and Aurora opens 
Heaven's smiling portals. Peris and nymphs peep through 
the golden glades, and an Angel's wing glances over the 
glossy scene." ^^- 

One feature of Hazlitt's style concerning which much 
has been said both in praise and in blame is his inveterate 
use of quotations. His pages, particularly when he is in 
a contemplative mood, are sown with snatches from the 
great poets, and the effect generally is of the happiest. A 
line of Shakespeare's or of Wordsworth's, blending with 
a vein of high feeling or deep reflection, transfigures the 
entire passage as if by magic. Sometimes the phrase is 
merely woven into the general texture of the prose without 
in any way raising its tone, and on occasion some fine poetic 
expression is vulgarized by being thrown into very common 
company. It is vandalism to muster a sonnet of Shake- 
speare's into such a service and it in no way enhances the 
expressiveness of the passage to say, " A flashy pamphlet 
has been run to a five-and-thirtieth edition, and thus ensured 
the wTiter a ' deathless date ' among political charlatans." ^^^ 
The fact is that quotations were a part of Hazlitt's vocab- 
ulary, which he used with the same freedom as common 
locutions and with less scrupulous regard for the associa- 
tions which were gathered about them. He negligently 
misquoted or wantonly adapted to his purpose, but the 
reader is walling to pardon the moments of irritation for 
the numerous delightful thrills which he has provoked by 
some happy poetic memory " stealing and giving odor " 
to a sentiment in itself dignified or elevated. 

Hazlitt's influence as a critic may be inferred from a 

''' Spirit of the Age, " Mr. T. Moore," IV, 353. 
''' Table Talk, " On Patronage and Puffing." 



Ixx Introduction 

summary of his opinions. It was not so much through the 
infusion of a new spirit in Hterature that he acted on 
other minds. Though his criticism owes much of its value 
to the freshness and boldness of his approach, this tempera- 
mental virtue was not something which could be imitated 
by a less gifted writer. Sainte-Beuve indeed seems to 
recognize Hazlitt as the exponent of the impetuous and 
inspired vein in criticism — " the kind of inspiration which 
accompanies and follows those frequent articles dashingly 
improvised and launched under full steam. One puts him- 
self completely into it : its value is exaggerated for the 
time being, its importance is measured by its fury, and if 
this leads to better results, there is no great harm after 
all." ^^* But though he professed these to be his own 
feelings as a critic, they were in him so modified by the 
traditional French moderation and suavity of tone, as well 
as by a greater precision of method, as to make the resem- 
blance to Hazlitt inconspicuous. It is hard to determine 
to what extent Hazlitt's individualism is responsible for the 
lawless impressionism of some later critics,^^^ but it is not 
to be imputed to him as a sin if, in the course of a century, 
one of his virtues has become exaggerated into a fault. 
He has but suffered human destiny. 

^^*"L'espece d'entrain qui accompagne et suit ces frequents 
articles improvises de verve et lances a toute vapeur. On s'y met 
tout entier : on s'en exagere la valeur dans le moment meme, on en 
mesure I'importance au bruit, et si cela mene a mieux faire, il n'y 
a pas grand mal apres tout." Portraits Contemporains, II, 515. 

^''^"' Range and keenness of appreciation' do not by themselves 
give taste, but merely romantic gusto or perceptiveness. In order 
that gusto may be elevated to taste it needs to be disciplined and 
selective. To this end it must come under the control of an 
entirely different order of intuitions, of v^hat I have called the 
'back pull toward the centre.' The romantic one-sidedness that is 
already so manifest in Hazlitt's conception of taste has, I maintain, 
gone to seed in Professor Saintsbury." Irving Babbitt, in Nation, 
May 16, 1912. 



Introduction Ixxi 

Hazlitt's influence has been wide in guiding the taste 
of readers and in creating or giving currency to a body 
of opinions on literature which has found acceptance 
among critics. If the tributes of Schlegel and Heine to 
Hazlitt's Shakespearian criticism were insufficient, we have 
the word of his own countrymen for it that numberless 
readers were initiated into a proper understanding of 
Shakespeare by means of his writings.^^^ In our own days 
Mr, Howells has told us that Hazlitt *' helped him to clarify 
and formulate his opinions of Shakespeare as no one else 
has yet done." ^^^ Critics no less than readers owe him 
a large debt. Hazlitt had not been writing many years 
before his fellow-laborers in literature began to recognize 
and pay homage to his superior insight. His opinions were 
quoted as having the weight of authority by those who 
were friendly to him, the writers in the London Magazine 
or in the Edinburgh Review ; they were appropriated with- 
out acknowledgement by the hostile contributors to Black- 
wood's. Many writers deferred to him as respectfully as 
he himself deferred to Coleridge and Lamb, even though 
Byron's respectable friends adjured the noble poet not to 
dignify Hazlitt in open controversy except by mentioning 
him as " a certain lecturer." Leigh Hunt was frequently 
indebted to him, but generally paid the tribute due. 
Macaulay sometimes assimilated a passage of Hazlitt's to 
the needs of his own earlier essays. In the essay on Milton 
his balancing of Charles's political vices against his domestic 
virtues is strikingly reminiscent of a similar treatment of 
Southey by the older critic. Personal dislike of Hazlitt, 
persisting after his death, for a long time prevented a 
proper respect being paid to his memory without much 
diminishing the weight of his influence. The attitude to- 



ne 

117 



T. N. Talfourd : Edinburgh Review, Nov., 1820. 
My Literary Passions, 120, 



Ixxii Introduction 

ward him is summed up by a writer whose treatment in 
general does not err on the side of enthusiasm. Hazlitt, 
he tells us, is " a writer with whose reputation fashion has 
hitherto had very little to do — who is even now more read 
than praised, more imitated than extolled, and whose various 
productions still interest many who care and know very 
little about the author." "^ But this very utterance was on 
the occasion of the turning of the tide. It was in a review 
of Hazlitt's Literary Remains which had been introduced 
by appreciative essays from the pens of Bulwer-Lytton 
and Thomas Noon Talfourd, the former not a little patron- 
izing, but Talfourd's excellent in its discrimination of the 
strength and weakness of Hazlitt. A few years later came 
the implied compliment of Home's New Spirit of the 
Age, which would hardly be worth mentioning were it 
not that Thackeray in reviewing it took occasion to pay 
an exquisite tribute to Hazlitt. ^^^ From this time forth 
he was not wanting in stout champions, though most people 
still maintained a cautious reserve in their judgments of 
him. So sound and penetrating a critic as Walter Bagehot 
became an earnest convert, and in Bagehot's writings Mr. 
Birrell has pointed out more than one resemblance to Haz- 
litt. James Russell Lowell has not been profuse in his 
expressions of admiration, but he has probably followed 
Hazlitt's track more closely than any other important critic. 
Many of his essays seem to have been composed with a 
volume of Hazlitt on the desk before him. There is the 
essay on Pope with its general correspondence of points 
and occasional startling parallel of phrase. Hazlitt at the 
end of his lecture on Pope and Dryden remarks that poetry 
had " declined by successive gradations from the poetry 
of imagination in the age of Elizabeth to the poetry of 

^^* Edinburgh Review, January, 1837. 

^^® Thackeray's Works, ed. Trent and Henneman, XXV, 350-51. 



Introduction Ixxiii 

fancy in the time of Charles I," and Lowell repeats this 
with some amplification. In the same connection he char- 
acterizes Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, and IMilton in the 
sharp epigrammatic manner reminding one of Hazlitt. In 
the concluding pages of the essay on Spenser we are also 
kept in a reminiscent mood, till Lowell tells us that *' to 
read him is like dreaming awake," and at once there flashes 
upon us Hazlitt's expression that '' Spenser is the poet of 
our waking dreams." It is through missionary w^ork like 
this, not altogether conscious and therefore all the more 
genuine, that his opinions have been diffused through the 
length and breadth of English and been incorporated into 
the common stock. " Gracious rills from the Hazlitt w^ater- 
shed have flowed in all directions, fertilizing a dry and 
thirsty land " — is the happily turned phrase of Mr. Birrell. 
If in our own day there are still persons who, looking upon 
criticism as a severe science, occasionally sneer at him as 
a " facile eulogist," ^-^ those who regard it rather as a 
gift have seen in him " the greatest critic that England 
has yet produced." ^-^ Wherever the golden mean between 
these two extremes of opinion may lie, there is no doubt 
that for introducing readers to an appreciation of the great 
things in English literature, Hazlitt still remains without 
an equal. 

^■"Robertson: Essays Toward a Critical Method. 8i. 
^" Saintsbury's History of Criticism and John Davidson's Sen- 
tences and Paragraphs, 113. 



THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 

The age of Elizabeth was distinguished, beyond, perhaps, 
any other in our history, by a number of great men, famous 
in different ways, and whose names have come down to 
us with unblemished honours ; statesmen, warriors, divines, 
scholars, poets, and philosophers, Raleigh, Drake, Coke, 
Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more 
frequent in our mouths, Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, 
Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, men whom fame 
has eternised in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by 
their words and acts, were benefactors of their country, and 
ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of different 
kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling: 
what they did, had the mark of their age and country upon 
it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak 
without offence or flattery), never shone out fuller or 
brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. 
Our writers and great men had something in them that 
savoured of the soil from which they grew : they were not 
French, they were not Dutch, or German, or Greek, or 
Latin ; they were truly English. They did not look out of 
themselves to see what they should be ; they sought for 
truth and nature, and found it in themselves. There was 
no tinsel, and but little art ; they were not the spoiled children 
of affectation and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, inde- 
pendent race of thinkers, with prodigious strength and 
energy, with none but natural grace, and heartfelt unob- 



2 English Literature 

trusive delicacy. They were not at all sophisticated. The 
mind of their country was great in them, and it prevailed. 
With their learning and unexampled acquirement, they did 
not forget that they were men : with all their endeavours 
after excellence, they did not lay aside the strong original 
bent and character of their minds. What they performed 
was chiefly nature's handy-work; and time has claimed it 
for his own. — To these, however, might be added others 
not less learned, nor with a scarce less happy vein, but less 
fortunate in the event, who, though as renowned in their 
day, have sunk into " mere oblivion," and of w^hom the 
only record (but that the noblest) is to be found in their 
works. Their works and their names, " poor, poor dumb 
names," are all that remains of such men as Webster, 
Deckar, Marston, IMarlow, Chapman, Heywood, ]\Iiddleton, 
and Rowley ! " How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails them 
not : " though they were the friends and fellow-labourers 
of Shakspeare, sharing his fame and fortunes with him, the 
rivals of Jonson, and the masters of Beaumont and 
Fletcher's well-sung woes ! They went out one by one 
unnoticed, like evening lights ; or were swallowed up in the 
headlong torrent of puritanic zeal which succeeded, and 
swept away everything in its unsparing course, throwing 
up the wrecks of taste and genius at random, and at long 
fitful intervals, amidst the painted gew-gaws and foreign 
frippery of the reign of Charles II. and from which w^e 
are only now recovering the scattered fragments and broken 
images to erect a temple to true Fame ! How long, before 
it will be completed ? 

If I can do anything to rescue some of these writers 
from hopeless obscurity, and to do them right, without 
prejudice to well-deserved reputation, I shall have succeeded 
in what I chiefly propose. I shall not attempt, indeed, 
to adjust the spelling, or restore the pointing, as if the 



The Age of Elizabeth 3 

genius of poetry lay hid in errors of the press, but leaving 
these weightier matters of critioism to those who are more 
able and willing to bear the burden, try to bring out their 
real beauties to the eager sight, '' draw the curtain of Time, 
and shew the picture of Genius," restraining my own ad- 
miration within reasonable bounds ! . . . 

We affect to wonder at Shakspeare, and one or two more 
of that period, aS solitary instances upon record ; whereas 
it is our own dearth of information that makes the waste; 
for there is no time more populous of intellect, or more 
prolific of intellectual wealth, than the one we are speaking 
of. Shakspeare did not look upon himself in this light, 
as a sort of monster of poetical genius, or on his contem- 
poraries as " less than smallest dwarfs," when he speaks 
with true, not false modesty, of himself and them, and of 
his wayward thoughts, " desiring this man's art, and that 
man's scope." We fancy that there were no such men, 
that could either add to or take anything away from him, 
but such there were. He indeed overlooks and commands 
the admiration of posterity^ but he does it from the tableland 
of the age in which he lived. He towered above his fellows, 
'' in shape and gesture proudly eminent ; " but he was one 
of a race of giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most 
graceful, and beautiful of them ; but it was a common and 
a noble brood. He was not something sacred and aloof 
from the vulgar herd of men, but shook hands with nature 
and the circumstances of the time, and is distinguished 
from his immediate contemporaries, not in kind, but in 
degree and greater variety of excellence. He did not form 
a class or species by himself, but belonged to a class or 
species. His age was necessary to him ; nor could he have 
been wrenched from his place in the edifice of which he 
was so conspicuous a part, without equal injury to himself 
and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, that " his soul 



4 English Literature 

was like a star, and dwelt apart." This cannot be said 
with any propriety of Shakspeare, who certainly moved in 
a constellation of bright luminaries, and " drew after him 
a third part of the heavens." If we allow, for argument's 
sake (or for truth's, which is better), that he was in himself 
equal to all his competitors put together; yet there was 
more dramatic excellence in that age than in the whole 
of the period that has elapsed since. If his contemporaries, 
with their united strength,, would hardly make one Shak- 
speare, certain it is that all his successors would not make 
half a one. With the exception of a single writer, Otway, 
and of a single play of his (Venice Preserved), there is 
nobody in tragedy and dramatic poetry (I do not here 
speak of comedy) to be compared to the great men of the 
age of Shakspeare, and immediately after. They are a 
mighty phalanx of kindred spirits closing him round, mov- 
ing in the same orbit, and impelled by the same causes in 
their whirling and eccentric career. They had the same 
faults and the same excellences; the same strength and 
depth and richness, the same truth of character, passion, 
imagination, thought and language, thrown, heaped, massed 
together without careful polishing or exact method, but 
poured out in unconcerned profusion from the lap of nature 
and genius in boundless and unrivalled magnificence. The 
sweetness of Deckar, the thought of Marston, the gravity 
of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher and his young-eyed wit, 
Jonson's learned sock, the flowing vein of Middleton, Hey- 
wood's ease, the pathos of Webster, and Marlow's deep 
designs, add a double lustre to the sweetness, thought, 
gravity, grace, wit, artless nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, 
and sublime conceptions of Shakspeare's Muse. They are 
indeed the scale by which we can best ascend to the true 
knowledge and love of him. Our admiration of them does 
not lessen our rehsh for him : but, on the contrary, increases 



The Age of Elizabeth 5 

and confirms it. — For such an extraordinary combination 
and development of fancy and genius many causes may be 
assigned ; and we may seek for the chief of them in reHgion, 
in poHtics, in the circumstances of the time, the recent dif- 
fusion of letters, in local situation, and in the character 
of the men who adorned that period, and availed them- 
selves so nobly .of the advantages placed within their 
reach. 

I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these 
causes, and of the manner in which they operated to mould 
and stamp the poetry of the country at the period of which 
I have to treat ; independently of incidental and fortuitous 
causes, for which there is no accounting, but which, after 
all, have often the greatest share in determining the most 
important results. 

The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this 
general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then 
taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and in- 
creased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the 
inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. 
The effect of the concussion was general ; but the shock was 
greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown, 
intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow ; heaved the ground 
from under the feet of bigotted faith and slavish obedience ; 
and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their 
accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry 
sea, and has never yet subsided. Germany first broke the 
spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watch-word; but 
England joined the shout^ and echoed it back with her 
island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in 
a longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius 
of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the 
nations. There was a mighty fermentation : the waters 
were out; public opinion was in a state of projection. Lib- 



6 English Literature 

erty was held out to all to think and speak the truth. Men's 
brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts full; 
and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect 
-the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity 
and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them 
free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet 
vice and bloated hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and 
made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, 
with which she had beguiled her followers and committed 
abominations with the people, fall harmless from their 
necks. 

The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the 
great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich 
treasures of religion and morality, which had been there 
locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the 
prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers 
(such they were thought) to the meanest of the people. 
It gave them a common interest in the common cause. 
Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It gave a 
mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of 
thought and feeling. It cemented their union of character 
and sentiment : it created endless diversity and collision 
of opinion. They found objects to employ their faculties, 
and a motive in the magnitude of the consequences attached 
to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of 
truth, and the most daring intrepidity in maintaining it. 
Religious controversy sharpens the understanding by the 
subtlety and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and braces 
the will by their infinite importance. We perceive in the 
history of this period a nervous masculine intellect. No 
levity, no feebleness, no indifference ; or if there were, it 
is a relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone 
to its general character. But there is a gravity approach- 
ing to piety ; a seriousness of impression, a conscientious 



The Age of Elizabeth 7 

severity of argument, an habitual fervour and enthusiasm 
in their mode of handHng almost every subject. The de- 
bates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough ; but 
they wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides con- 
fined to a few : they did not affect the general mass of the 
community. But the Bible was thrown open to all ranks 
and conditions *' to run and read," with its wonderful 
table of contents from Genesis to the Revelations. Every 
village in England would present the scene so well de- 
scribed in Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night. I cannot think 
that all this variety and weight of knowledge could be 
thrown in all at once upon the mind of a people, and not 
make some impression upon it, the traces of which might 
be discerned in the manners and literature of the age. For 
to leave more disputable points^ and take only the historical 
parts of the Old Testament, or the moral sentiments of the 
New, there is nothing like them in the power of exciting 
awe and admiration, or of rivetting sympathy. We see 
what Milton has made of the account of the Creation, from 
the manner in which he has treated it, imbued and impreg- 
nated with the spirit of the time of which we speak. Or 
what is there equal (in that romantic interest and patriarchal 
simplicity which goes to the heart of a country, and rouses 
it, as it were, from its lair in wastes and wildernesses) equal 
to the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachael and 
Laban, of Jacob's Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, the descrip- 
tions in the Book of Job, the dehverance of the Jews out 
of Egypt, or the account of their captivity and return from 
Babylon? There is in all these parts of the Scripture, and 
numberless more of the same kind, to pass over the Orphic 
hymns of David, the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, or 
the gorgeous visions of Ezekiel, an originality, a vastness of 
conception, a depth and tenderness of feeling, and a touching 
simplicity in the mode of narration, which he who does 



8 English Literature 

not feel, need be made of no " penetrable stuff." There 
is something in the character of Christ too (leaving religious 
faith quite out of the question) of more sweetness and 
majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of 
man, by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to 
be found in history, whether actual or feigned. This char- 
acter is that of a sublime humanity, such as was never 
seen on earth before, nor since. This shone manifestly 
both in his words and actions. We see it in his washing 
the Disciples' feet the night before his death, that unspeak- 
able instance of humility and love, above all art, all mean- 
ness, and all pride, and in the leave he took of them on 
that occasion, " My peace I give unto you, that peace 
which the world cannot give, give I unto you ; " and in 
his last commandment, that '' they should love one another." 
Who can read the account of his behaviour on the cross, 
when turning to his mother he said, " Woman, behold thy 
son," and to the Disciple John, '' Behold thy mother," and 
" from that hour that Disciple took her to his own home," 
without having his heart smote within him ! We see it in 
his treatment of the woman taken in adultery, and in his 
excuse for the woman who poured precious ointment on 
his garment as an offering of devotion and love, which is 
here all in all. His religion was the religion of the heart. 
We see it in his discourse with the Disciples as they walked 
•together towards Emmaus, when their hearts burned within 
them ; in his sermon from the Mount, in his parable of 
the good Samaritan, and in that of the Prodigal Son — in 
every act and word of his Hfe, a grace, a mildness, a dignity 
and love, a patience and wisdom worthy of the Son of 
God. His whole life and being were imbued, steeped in 
this word, charity; it was the spring, the well-head from 
which every thought and feeling gushed into act ; and it 
was this that breathed a mild glory from his face in that 



The Age of Elizabeth 9 

last agony upon the cross^ '' when the meek Saviour bowed 
his head and died," praying for his enemies. He was the 
first true teacher of moraHty; for he alone conceived the 
idea of a pure humanity. He redeemed man from the 
worship of that idol, self, and instructed him by precept 
and example to love his neighbour as himself, to forgive 
our enemies, to do good to those that curse us and despite- 
fully use us. He taught the love of good for the sake of 
good, without regard to personal or sinister views^ and made 
the affections of the heart the sole seat of morality, instead 
of the pride of the understanding or the sternness of the 
will. In answering the question, '* who is our neighbour? " 
as one who stands in need of our assistance, and whose 
wounds we can bind up, he has done more to humanize the 
thoughts and tame the unruly passions, than all who have 
tried to reform and benefit mankind. The very idea of 
abstract benevolence, of the desire to do good because 
another wants our services, and of regarding the human 
race as one family^ the offspring of one common parent, 
is hardly to be found in any other code or system. It was 
'* to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolish- 
ness." The Greeks and Romans never thought of consid- 
ering others, but as they were Greeks or Romans, as they 
were bound to them by certain positive ties, or, on the 
other hand, as separated from them by fiercer antipathies. 
Their virtues were the virtues of political machines, their 
vices were the vices of demons, ready to infiict or to endure 
pain with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. 
But in the Christian religion, " we perceive a softness 
coming over the heart of a nation, and the iron scales that 
fence and harden it, melt and drop off." It becomes mal- 
leable, capable of pity, of forgiveness, of relaxing in its 
claims, and remitting its power. We strike it, and it does 
not hurt us : it is not steel or marble, but flesh and blood, 



10 English Literature 

clay tempered with tears, and " soft as sinews of the new- 
born babe." The gospel was first preached to the poor, for 
it consulted their wants and interests, not its own pride and 
arrogance. It first promulgated the equality of mankind 
in the community of duties and benefits. It denounced the 
iniquities of the chief Priests and Pharisees, and declared 
itself at variance with principalities and powers, for it sym- 
pathizes not with the oppressor, but the oppressed. It first 
abolished slavery, for it did not consider the power of the 
will to inflict injury, as clothing it with a right to do so. 
Its law is good, not power. It at the same time tended 
to wean the mind from the grossness of sense, and a 'par- 
ticle of its divine flame was lent to brighten and purify 
the lamp of love ! 

There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the 
divine mission of Christ, have taken an unaccountable 
prejudice to his doctrines, and have been disposed to deny 
the merit of his character; but this was not the feeling of 
the great men in the age of Elizabeth (whatever might be 
their belief) one of whom says of him, with a boldness 
equal to its piety: 

" The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer; 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 

This was old honest Deckar, and the lines ought to em- 
balm his memory to every one who has a sense either of 
religion, or philosophy, or humanity, or true genius. Nor 
can I help thinking, that we may discern the traces of the 
influence exerted by religious faith in the spirit of the 
poetry of the age of EHzabeth, in the means of exciting 
terror and pity, in the delineation of the passions of grief, 
remorse, love, sympathy, the sense of shame, in the fond 



The Age of Elizabeth ii 

desires, the longings after immortality, in the heaven of 
hope, and the abyss of despair it lays open to us.* 

The Hterature of this age then, I would say, was strongly 
influenced (among other causes), first by the spirit of Chris- 
tianity, and secondly by the spirit of Protestantism. 

The effects of the Reformation on politics and philosophy 
may be seen in the writings and history of the next and 
of the following ages. They are still at work, and will 
continue to be so. The effects on the poetry of the time 
wxre chiefly confined to the moulding of the character, and 
giving a powerful impulse to the intellect of the country. 
The immediate use or appHcation that was made of religion 
to subjects of imagination and fiction was not (from an 
obvious ground of separation) so direct or frequent, as that 
which was made of the classical and romantic literature. 

For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating 
stores of the Greek and Roman mythology, and those of 
the romantic poetry of Spain and Italy, were eagerly ex- 
plored by the curious, and thrown open in translations to 
the admiring gaze of the vulgar. This last circumstance 
could hardly have afforded so much advantage to the poets 
of that day, wdio were themselves, in fact, the translators, 
as it shews the general curiosity and increasing interest 
in such subjects, as a prevaiHng feature of the times. There 
were translations of Tasso by Fairfax, and of Ariosto by 
Harrington, of Homer and Hesiod by Chapman, and of 
Virgil long before, and Ovid soon after; there was Sir 
Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, of which Shak- 
speare has made such admirable use in his Coriolanus and 
Julius Caesar ; and Ben Jonson's tragedies of Catiline and 
Sejanus may themselves be considered as almost literal 

* In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the 
place of the translations of the Bible : and this dumb art arose in 
the silence of the written oracles. 



12 English Literature 

translation-s into verse, of Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero's 
Orations in his consulship. Boccacio, the divine Boccacio, 
Petrarch, Dante, the satirist Aretine, Alachiavel, CastigHone, 
and others, were famihar to our writers, and they make 
occasional mention of some few French authors, as Ronsard 
and Du Bartas ; for the French literature had not at this 
stage arrived at its Augustan period, and it was the imita- 
tion of their literature a century afterwards, when it had 
arrived at its greatest height (itself copied from the Greek 
and Latin), that enfeebled and impoverished our own. But 
of the time that we are considering, it might be said, with- 
out much extravagance, that every breath that blew, that 
every wave that rolled to our shores, brought with it some 
accession to our knowledge, which was engrafted on the 
national genius. In fact, all the disposeable materials that 
had been accumulating for a long period of time, either 
in our own, or in foreign countries, were now brought 
together, and required nothing more than to be wrought up, 
polished, or arranged in striking forms, for ornament and 
use. To this every inducement prompted, the novelty of 
the acquisition of knowledge in many cases, the emulation 
of foreign wits, and of immortal works, the want and the 
expectation of such works among ourselves, the oppor- 
tunity and encouragement afforded for their production by 
leisure and affluence; and, above all, the insatiable desire 
of the mind to beget its own image, and to construct out 
of itself, and for the delight and admiration of the world 
and posterity, that excellence of which the idea exists hith- 
erto only in its own breast, and the impression of which 
it would make as universal as the eye of heaven, the benefit 
as common as the air we breathe. The first impulse of 
genius is to create what never existed before : the con- 
templation of that, which is so created, is sufficient to satisfy 
the demands of taste ; and it is the habitual study and imita- 



The Age of Elizabeth 13 

tion of the original models that takes away the power, and 
even wish to do the like. Taste limps after genius, and 
from copying the artificial models, we lose sight of the 
living principle of nature. It is the effort we make, and 
the impulse we acquire, in overcoming the first obstacles, 
that projects us forward; it is the necessity for exertion 
that makes us conscious of our strength ; but this necessity 
and this impulse once removed, the tide of fancy and en- 
thusiasm, which is at first a running stream, soon settles 
and crusts into the standing pool of dulness, criticism, and 
virtu. 

What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man 
at this period, was the discovery of the New World, and 
the reading of voyages and travels. Green islands and 
golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of 
the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or 
wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairy 
land was realized in new and unknown worlds. '' Fortunate 
fields and groves and flowery vales, thrice happy isles," 
were found floating " like those Hesperian gardens famed 
of old," beyond Atlantic seas, as dropt from the zenith. 
The people, the soil, the clime, every thing gave unlimited 
scope to the curiosity of the traveller and reader. Other 
manners might be said to enlarge the bounds of knowledge, 
and new mines of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is 
from a voyage to the Straits of Magellan that Shakspeare 
has taken the hint of Prospero's Enchanted Island, and of 
the savage Cafiban with his god Setebos.* Spenser seems 
to have had the same feeling in his mind in the production 
of his Faery Queen, and vindicates his poetic fiction on 
this very ground of analogy. 

" Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign. 
That all this famous antique history 

* See A Voyage to the Straits of Magellan, 1594. 



14 English Literature 

Of some the abundance of an idle brain 

Will judged be, and painted forgery, 

Rather than matter of just memory: 

Since none that breatheth hving air, doth know 

Where is that happy land of faery 

Which I so much do vaunt, but no where show. 

But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know. 

But let that man with better sense avise. 
That of the world least part to us is read: 
And daily how through hardy enterprize 
Many great regions are discovered. 
Which to late age were never mentioned. 
Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru? 
Or who in venturous vessel measured 
The Amazons' huge river, now found true? 
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view? 

Yet all these were when no man did them know, 
Yet have from wisest ages hidden been : 
And later times things more unknown shall show. 
Why then should witless man so much misween 
That nothing is but that which he hath seen? 
What if within the moon's fair shining sphere. 
What if in every other star unseen, 
Of other worlds he happily should hear. 
He wonder would much more ; yet such to some appear." 

Fancy's air-drawn pictures after history's waking dream 
shewed like clouds over mountains ; and from the romance 
of real life to the idlest fiction, the transition seemed easy. — 
Shakspeare, as well as others of his time, availed himself 
of the old Chronicles, and of the traditions or fabulous 
inventions contained in them in such ample measure, and 
which had not yet been appropriated to the purposes of 
poetry or the drama. The stage was a new thing; and 
those who had to supply its demands laid their hands upon 
whatever came within their reach : they were not particular 
as to the means, so that they gained the end. Lear is 
founded upon an old ballad ; Othello on an Italian novel ; 
Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch tradition; 



The Age of Elizabeth 15 

One of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the 
last in HolHngshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in 
each, are authenticated in the old Gothic history. There 
was also this connecting link between the poetry of this 
age and the supernatural traditions of a former one, that 
the belief in them was still extant^ and in full force and 
visible operation among the vulgar (to say no more) in the 
time of our authors. The appalling and wild chimeras of 
superstition and ignorance, " those bodiless creations that 
ecstacy is very cunning in," were inwoven with existing 
manners and opinions, and all their effects on the passions 
of terror or pity might be gathered from common and actual 
observation — might be discerned in the workings of the face, 
the expressions of the tongue, the writhings of a troubled 
conscience. '' Your face, my Thane, is as a book where 
men may read strange matters." Midnight and secret mur- 
ders too, from the imperfect state of the police, were more 
common ; and the ferocious and brutal manners that would 
stamp the brow of the hardened ruffian or hired assassin, 
more incorrigible and undisguised. The portraits of Tyrrel 
and Forrest were, no doubt, done from the life. We find 
that the ravages of the plague, the destructive rage of fire, 
the poisoned chalice, lean famine, the serpent's mortal sting, 
and the fury of wild beasts, were the common topics of 
their poetry, as they were common occurrences in more 
remote periods of history. They were the strong ingredi- 
ents thrown into the cauldron of tragedy, to make it " thick 
and slab." Man's life was (as it appears to me) more full 
of traps and pit-falls ; of hair-breadth accidents by flood 
and field ; more way-laid by sudden and startling evils ; it 
trod on the brink of hope and fear ; stumbled upon fate 
unawares ; while tlie imagination, close behind it, caught at 
and clung to the shape of danger, or '' snatched a wild and 
fearful joy " from its escape. The accidents of nature were 



i6 English Literature 

less provided against; the excesses of the passions and of 
lawless power were less regulated, and produced more 
strange and desperate catastrophes. The tales of Boccacio 
are founded on the great pestilence of Florence, Fletcher 
the poet died of the plague, and Marlow was stabbed in a 
tavern quarrel. The strict authority of parents, the inequal- 
ity of ranks, or the hereditary feuds between different fam- 
ilies, made more unhappy loves or matches. 

" The course of true love never did run even." 

Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in 
our elder writers, was yet in considerable activity in the 
reign of Elizabeth. " The age of chivalry was not then 
quite gone, nor the glory of Europe extinguished for ever.'' 
Jousts and tournaments were still common with the nobility 
in England and in foreign countries : Sir Philip Sidney was 
particularly distinguished for his proficiency in these exer- 
cises (and indeed fell a martyr to his ambition as a soldier) 
— and the gentle Surrey was still more famous, on the same 
account, just before him. It is true, the general use of 
fire-arms gradually superseded the necessity of skill in the 
sword, or bravery in the person : and as a symptom of the 
rapid degeneracy in this respect, we find Sir John Suckling 
soon after boasting of himself as one — 

" Who prized black eyes, and a luckj- hit 
At bowls, above all the trophies of wit." 

It was comparatively an age of peace, 

" Like strength reposing on his own right arm ; " 

but the sound of civil combat might still be heard in the dis- 
tance, the spear glittered to the eye of memory, or the clash- 
ing of armour struck on the imagination of the ardent and 
the young. They were borderers on the savage state, on the 



The Age of Elizabeth 17 

times of war and bigotry, though in the lap of arts, of 
luxury, and knowledge. They stood on the shore and saw 
the billows rolling after the storm : '' they heard the tumult, 
and were still." The manners and out-of-door amuse- 
ments were more tinctured with a spirit of adventure and 
romance. The war with wild beasts, &c. was more strenu- 
ously kept up in country sports. I do not think we could 
get from sedentary poets, who had never mingled in the 
vicissitudes, the dangers, or excitements of the chase, such 
descriptions of hunting and other athletic games, as are to 
be found in Shakspeare's IMidsummer Night's Dream or 
Fletcher's Noble Kinsmen. 

With respect to the good cheer and hospitable living of 
those times, I cannot agree with an ingenious and agreeable 
writer of the present day, that it was general or frequent. 
The very stress laid upon certain holidays and festivals, 
shews that they did not keep up the same Saturnalian 
licence and open house all the year round. They reserved 
themselves for great occasions, and made the best amends 
they could, for a year of abstinence and toil by a week of 
merriment and convivial indulgence. Persons in middle 
life at this day, who can afford a good dinner every day, do 
not look forward to it as any particular subject of exulta- 
tion : the poor peasant, who can only contrive to treat him- 
self to a joint of meat on a Sunday, considers it as an 
event in the week. So, in the old Cambridge comedy of the 
Return from Parnassus, we find this indignant description 
of the progress of luxury in those days, put into the mouth 
of one of the speakers. 

" Why is't not strange to see a ragged clerke, 
Some stammell weaver, or some butcher's sonne, 
That scrubb'd a late within a sleeveless gowne, 
When the commencement, like a morrice dance, 
Hath put a bell or two about his legges, 
Created him a sweet cleane gentleman : 



i8 ^ English Literature 

How then he 'gins to follow fashions. 
He whose thin sire dwelt in a smokye roofe, 
Must make tobacco, and must wear a locke. 
His thirsty dad drinkes in a wooden bowle, 
But his sweet self is served in silver plate. 
His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges 
For one good Christmas meal on new year's day, 
But his mawe must be capon cramm'd each day." 

Act III. Scene 2. 



This does not look as if in those days " it snowed of meat 
and drink," as a matter of course throughout the year! — 
The distinctions of dress, the badges of different profes- 
sions, the very signs of the shops, which we have set aside 
for written inscriptions over the doors, were, as Mr. Lamb 
observes, a sort of visible language to the imagination, and 
hints for thought. Like the costume of different foreign 
nations, they had an immediate striking and picturesque 
effect, giving scope to the fancy. The surface of society 
was embossed with hieroglyphics, and poetry existed " in 
art and compliment extern." The poetry of former times 
might be directly taken from real life, as our poetry is 
taken from the poetry of former times. Finally, the face 
of nature, which was the same glorious object then that it 
is now, was open to them; and coming first, they gathered 
her fairest flowers to live for ever in their verse: — the 
movements of the human heart were not hid from them, 
for they had the same passions as we, only less disguised, 
and less subject to controul. Deckar has given an admira- 
ble description of a mad-house in one of his plays. But it 
might be perhaps objected, that it was only a literal account 
taken from Bedlam at that time; and it might be answered, 
that the old poets took the same method of describing the 
passions and fancies of men whom they met at large, which 
forms the point of communion between us : for the title of 
the old play, " A Mad World, my Masters," is hardly yet 



The Age of Elizabeth 19 

obsolete ; and we are pretty much the same Bedlam still, 
perhaps a little better managed, like the real one, and with 
more care and humanity shewn to the patients ! 

Lastly, to conclude this account; what gave a unity 
and common direction to all these causes, was the natural 
genius of the country, which was strong in these writers 
in proportion to their strength. We are a nation of island- 
ers, • and we cannot help it ; nor mend ourselves if we 
would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when we 
try to ape others. Music and painting are not our forte: 
for what we have done in that way has been little, and that 
borrowed from others with great difficulty. But we may 
boast of our poets and philosophers. That's something. We 
have had strong heads and sound hearts among us. Thrown 
on one side of the world, and left to bustle for ourselves, 
we have fought out many a battle for truth and freedom. 
That is our natural style ; and it were to be wished we 
had in no instance departed from it. Our situation has 
given us a certain cast of thought and character; and our 
liberty has enabled us to make the most of it. We are of 
a stiff clay, not moulded into every fashion, with stubborn 
joints not easily bent. We are slow to think, and therefore 
impressions do not work upon us till they act in masses. 
We are not forward to express our feelings, and therefore 
they do not come from us till they force their way in the 
most impetuous eloquence. Our language is, as it were, 
to begin anew, and we make use of the most singular and 
boldest combinations to explain ourselves. Our wit comes 
from us, '' like birdlime, brains and all." We pay too little 
attention to form and method, leave our works in an unfin- 
ished state, but still the materials we work in are solid and 
of nature's mint ; we do not deal in counterfeits. We both 
under and over-do, but we keep an eye to the prominent 
features, the main chance. We are more for weight than 



20 English Literature 

show ; care only about what interests ourselves, instead of 
trying to impose upon others by plausible appearances, and 
are obstinate and intractable in not conforming to common 
rules, by which many arrive at their ends with half the 
real waste of thought and trouble. We neglect all but the 
principal object, gather our force to make a great blow, 
bring it down, and relapse into sluggishness and ihdififer- 
ence again. Materiam snperabat opus, cannot be said of 
us. We may be accused of grossness, but not of flimsiness ; 
of extravagance, but not of affectation ; of want of art and 
refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our 
literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque ; unequal and 
irregular ; not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform 
texture, but of great weight in the whole, and of incom- 
parable value in the best parts. It aims at an excess of 
beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either very good 
indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This character 
applies in particular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth, 
which is its best period, before the introduction of a rage 
for French rules and French models ; for whatever may 
be the value of our own original style of composition, there 
can be neither offence nor presumption in saying, that it 
is at least better than our second-hand imitations of others. 
Our understanding (such as it is, and must remain to be 
good for anything) is not a thoroughfare for common 
places, smooth as the palm of one's hand, but full of knotty 
points and jutting excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown 
with brambles; and I like this aspect of the mind (as some 
one said of the country), where nature keeps a good deal 
of the soil in her own hands. Perhaps the genius of our 
poetry has more of Pan than of Apollo ; " but Pan is a 
God, Apollo is no more ! " 



II 

SPENSER 

Spenser flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and 
was sent with Sir John Davies into Ireland, of which he 
has left behind him some tender recollections in his descrip- 
tion of the bog of Allan, and a record in an ably written 
paper, containing observations on the state of that country 
and the means of improving it, which remain in full force 
to the present day. Spenser died at an obscure inn in 
London, it is supposed in distressed circumstances. The 
treatment he received from Burleigh is well known. 
Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was engaged in active Hfe ; 
but the genius of his poetry was not active : it is inspired 
by the love of ease, and relaxation from all the cares and 
business of life. Of all the poets, he is the most poetical. 
Though much later than Chaucer, his obligations to pre- 
ceding writers were less. He has in some measure bor- 
rowed the plan of his poem (as a number of distinct nar- 
ratives) from Ariosto ; but he has engrafted upon it an 
exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuousness of 
sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian writer. 
Farther, Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject- 
matter. There is an originality, richness, and variety in his 
allegorical personages and fictions, which almost vies with \ 
the splendor of the ancient mythology. If Ariosto trans- ^ 
ports us into the regions of romance, Spenser's poetry is 
all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in 
a company, gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. In 

21 



22 English Literature 

Spensei", we wander in another world, among ideal beings. 
The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a lovelier nature, 
by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills and 
fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it, but 
as we expected to find it; and fulfils the delightful promise 
of our youth. He waves his wand of enchantment — and at 
once embodies airy beings, and throws a delicious veil 
over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of 
fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His 
ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. He 
is the painter of abstractions^ and describes them with daz- 
zling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid he makes the God 
of Love " clap on high his coloured winges tzvain; " and 
it is said of Gluttony in the Procession of the Passions, 

" In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad." 

At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of 
beauty; as where he compares Prince Arthur's crest to the 
appearance of the almond tree : 

" Upon the top of all his lofty crest, 

A bunch of hairs discolour'd diversely 
With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest 
Did shake and seem'd to daunce for jollity; 
Like to an almond tree ymounted high 

On top of green Selenis all alone, 
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily ; 
Her tender locks do tremble every one 
At every Httle breath that under heav'n is blown." 

The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving 
principle of his mind ; and he is guided in his fantastic 
delineations by no rule but the impulse of an inexhaustible 
imagination. He luxuriates equally in scenes of Eastern 
magnificence ; or the still solitude of a hermit's cell — in the 
extremes of sensuality or refinement. 



Spenser 23 

In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered 
old man by a wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a 
dwarf lagging far behind, a damsel in a boat upon an 
enchanted lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs; and all of a 
sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers 
burning, amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, 
and song, " and mask, and antique pageantry." What can 
be more solitary, more shut up in itself, than his description 
of the house of Sleep, to which Archimago sends for a 
dream : 

" And more to lull him in his slumber soft 

A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down, 
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft, 

Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sound 
Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound. 
No other noise, nor people's troublous cries 
That still are wont t' annoy the walled town 
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies 
Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies." 

It is as if " the honey-heavy dew of slumber " had settled 
on his pen in writing these lines. How different in the 
subject (and yet how like in beauty) is the following de- 
scription of the Bower of Bliss : 

** Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound 
Of all that mote delight a dainty ear; 
Such as at once might not on Hving ground, 
Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere : 
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear, 

To tell what manner musicke that mote be; 
For all that pleasing is to living eare 
Was there consorted in one harmonee : 
Birds, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree. 

The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefull shade 
Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet: 

The angelical soft trembling voices made 
To th' instruments divine respondence meet. 



24 English Literature 

The silver sounding instruments did meet 
With the base murmur of the water's fall ; 

The water's fall with difference discreet, 

Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; 
The gentle warbHng wind low answered to all." 

The remainder of the passage has all that voluptuous 
pathos, and languid brilliancy of fancy, in which this writer 
excelled : 

" The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay ; 
Ah ! see, whoso f ayre thing dost fain to see, 
In springing flower the image of thy day ! 
Ah ! see the virgin rose, how sweetly she 
Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty. 

That fairer seems the less ye see her may ! 
Lo ! see soon after, how more bold and free 
Her bared bosom she doth broad display ; 
Lo ! see soon after, how she fades and falls away ! 

So passeth in the passing of a day 

Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower ; 
Ne more doth flourish after first decay, 

That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower 
Of many a lady and many a paramour ! 

Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime, 
For soon comes age that will her pride deflower; 

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time, 
Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime. " * 

He ceased ; and then gan all the quire of birds 

Their divers notes to attune unto his lay. 
As in approvance of his pleasing wordes. 

The constant pair heard all that he did say, 
Yet swerved not, but kept their forward way 

Through many covert groves and thickets close, 
In which they creeping did at last display f 

That wanton lady with her lover loose. 
Whose sleepy head she in her lap did soft dispose. 

* Taken from Tasso. 

f This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms 
which Spenser sometimes took with language. 



Spenser 25 

Upon a bed of roses she was laid 

As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin ; 
And was arrayed or rather disarrayed, 

All in a veil of silk and silver thin, 
That hid no whit her alabaster skin. 

But rather shewed more white, if more might be: 
More subtle web Arachne cannot spin ; 

Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see 
Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee. 

Her snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil 

Of hungry eyes which n'ote therewith be fiill'd. 
And yet through languor of her late sweet toil 

Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill'd. 
That like pure Orient perles adown it trill'd ; 

And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight 
Moisten'd their fiery beams, with which she thrill'd 

Frail hearts, yet quenched not ; Hke starry light, 
Which sparkling on the silent waves does seem more bright." 

The finest things in Spenser are, the character of Una, 
in the first book ; the House of Pride ; the Cave of Mammon, 
and the Cave of Despair ; the account of Memory, of whom 
it is said, among other things, 

" The wars he well remember'd of King Nine, 
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine ; " 



the description of Belphoebe ; the story of Florimel and the 
Witch's son; the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of 
Bhss; the Mask of Cupid; and Colin Clout's vision, in the 
last book. But some people will say that all this may be 
very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account 
of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they 
thought it would bite them : they look at it as a child looks 
at a painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its 
shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle 
with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. 
Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pike- 



26 English Literature 

staff. It might as well be pretended that we cannot see 
Poussin's pictures for the allegory, as that the allegory 
prevents us from understanding Spenser. For instance, 
when Britomart, seated amidst the young warriors, lets 
fall her hair and discovers her sex, is it necessary to know 
the part she plays in the allegory, to understand the beauty 
of the following stanza? 

"And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest 

Was for like need enforc'd to disarray. 
Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest, 

Her golden locks that were in trammels gay 
Upbounden, did themselves adown display, 

And raught unto her heels like sunny beams 
That in a cloud their Hght did long time stay ; 

Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams, 
And through the persant air shoot forth their azure streams." 

Or is there any mystery in what is said of Belphoebe, that 
her hair was sprinkled with flowers and blossoms which had 
been entangled in it as she fled through the woods? Or 
is it necessary to have a more distinct idea of Proteus, than 
that which is given of him in his boat, with the frighted 
Florimel at his feet, while 

" — the cold icicles from his rough beard 
Dropped adown upon her snowy breast ! " 

Or is it not a sufficient account of one of the sea-gods that 
pass by them, to say — 

" That was Arion crowned : — 
So went he playing on the watery plain." 

Or to take the Procession of the Passions that draw the 
coach of Pride, in which the figures of Idleness, of Glut- 
tony, of Lechery, of Avarice, of Envy, and of Wrath speak, 
one should think, plain enough for themselves ; such as 
this of Guttony: 



Spenser 27 

" And b)^ his side rode loathsome Gluttony, 
Deformed creature, on a filthy swine; 
His belly was up blown with luxury ; 

And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne; 
And like a crane his neck was long and fine, 
With which he swallowed up excessive feast, 
For want whereof poor people oft did pine. 

In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad ; 

For other clothes he could not wear for heat ; 
And on his head an ivy garland had, 

From under which fast trickled down the sweat : 
Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat, 

And in his hand did bear a bouzing can, 
Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat 

His drunken corse he scarce upholden can; 
In shape and life more like a monster than a man." 

Or this of Lechery : 

" And next to him rode lustfull Lechery 

Upon a bearded goat, whose rugged hair 
And whaly eyes (the sign of jealousy) 

Was like the person's self whom he did bear: 
Who rough and black, and filthy did appear. 
Unseemly man to please fair lady's eye : 
Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear, 

When fairer faces were bid standen by : 
O! who does know the bent of woman's fantsay? 

In a green gown he clothed was full fair, 

Which underneath did hide his filthiness; 
And in his hand a burning heart he bare, - . 

Full of vain follies and new fangleness ; 
For he was false and fraught with fickleness ; 

And learned had to love with secret looks ; 
And well could dance ; and sing with ruefulness ; 

And fortunes tell ; and read in loving books ; 
And thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks. 

Inconstant man that loved all he saw, 

And lusted after all that he did love ; 
Ne would his looser life be tied to law; 

Bait joyed weak women's hearts to tempt and prove, 
If from their loyal loves he might them move." 



28 English Literature 

This is pretty plain-spoken. Mr. Southey says of Spenser : 

"Yet not more sweet 
Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise; 
High priest of all the Muses' mysteries ! " 

On the contrary, no one was more apt to pry into mysteries 
which do not strictly belong to the Muses. 

Of the same kind with the Procession of the Passions, 
as Httle obscure, and still more beautiful, is the Mask of 
Cupid, with his train of votaries : 

" The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy 
Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer; 

His garment neither was of silk nor say, 

But painted plumes in goodly order dight, 
Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array 

Their tawny bodies in their proudest pHght ; 
As those same plumes so seem'd he vain and light. 

That by his gait might easily appear ; 
For still he far'd as dancing in delight, 

And in his hand a windy fan did bear 
That in the idle air he mov'd still here and there. 

And him beside march'd amorous Desire, 

Who seem'd of riper years than the other swain, 
Yet was that other swain this elder's sire. 

And gave him being, common to them twain : 
His garment was disguised very vain, 

And his embroidered bonnet sat awry; 
'Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain, 

Which still he blew, and kindled busily, 
That soon they hfe conceiv'd and forth in flames did fly. 

Next after him went Doubt, who was j^clad 

In a discolour'd coat of strange disguise. 
That at his back a broad capuccio had, 

And sleeves dependant Albanese-wise; 
He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes. 

And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way, 
Or that the floor to shrink he did avise ; 

And on a broken reed he still did stay 
His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay. 



Spenser 29 

With him went Daunger, cloth'd in ragged weed, 

Made of bear's skin, that him more dreadful made; 
Yet his own face was dreadfull, ne did need 

Strange horror to deform his grisly shade ; 
A net in th' one hand, and a rusty blade 

In th' other was ; this Mischiefe, that Mishap ; 
With th' one his foes he threat'ned to invade, 

W^ith th' other he his friends meant to enwrap ; 
For whom he could not kill he practiz'd to entrap. 

Next him was Fear, all arm'd from top to toe, 

Yet thought himself not safe enough thereby, 
But fear'd each shadow moving to and fro ; 

And his own arms when glittering he did spy 
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly. 

As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heel'd; 
And evermore on Daunger fixt his eye, 

'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield, 
Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield. 

With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid, 

Of chearfull look and lovely to behold; 
In silken samite she was Hght array'd. 

And her fair locks were woven up in gold ; 
She always smil'd, and in her hand did hold 

An holy-water sprinkle dipt in dew, 
With which she sprinkled favours manifold 

On whom she list, and did great liking shew, 
Great liking unto many, but true love to few. 

Next after them, the winged God himself 

Came riding on a lion ravenous, 
Taught to obey the menage of that elfe 

That man and beast with power imperious 
Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous : 

His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind, 
That his proud spoil of that same dolorous 

Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind; 
W^hich seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind. 

Of which full proud, himself uprearing high, • 
He looked round about with stern disdain. 

And did survey his goodly company ; 
And marshalling the evil-ordered train, 

With that the darts which his right hand did strain, 



30 English Literature 

Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake, 
And clapt on high his colour'd winges twain, 
That all his many it afraid did make: 
Tho, blinding him again, his way he forth did take." 

The description of Hope, in this series of historical por- 
traits, is one of the most beautiful in Spenser: and the 
triumph of Cupid at the mischief he has made, is worthy 
of the malicious urchin deity. In reading these descrip- 
tions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of Rubens's 
allegorical pictures; but the account of Satyrane taming 
the lion's whelps and lugging the bear's cubs along in his 
arms while yet an infant, whom his mother so naturally 
advises to '' go seek some other play-fellows," has even 
more of this high picturesque character. Nobody but 
Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser; and he 
could not have given the sentiment, the airy dream that 
hovers over it ! 

With all this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep. 
The only jest in his poem is an allegorical play upon words, 
where he describes Malbecco as escaping in the herd of 
goats, '' by the help of his fayre horns on hight." But 
he has been unjustly charged with a want of passion and 
of strength. He has both in an immense degree. He has 
not indeed the pathos of immediate action or suffering, 
which is more properly the dramatic; but he has all the 
pathos of sentiment and romance — all that belongs to distant 
objects of terror, and uncertain, imaginary distress. His 
strength, in like manner, is not strength of will or action, 
of bone and muscle, nor is it coarse and palpable — but it 
assumes a character of vastness and sublimity seen through 
the same visionary medium, and blended with the appalling 
associations of preternatural agency. We need only turn, 
in proof of this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of 
Mammon, or to the account of the change of Malbecco into 



Spenser 31 

Jealousy. The following stanzas, in the description of the 
Cave of Mammon, the grisly house of Plutus, are unrivalled 
for the portentous massiness of the forms, the splendid 
chiaro-scuro, and shadowy horror. 

" That house's form within was rude and strong, 
Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, 
From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung, 

Embbssed with massy gold of glorious gift, 
And with rich metal loaded every rift, 

That heavy ruin they did seem to threat : 
And over them Arachne high did lift 

Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, 
Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet. 

Both roof and floor, and walls were all of gold, 

But overgrown with dust and old decay,* 
And hid in darkness that none could behold 

The hue thereof : for view of cheerful day 
Did never in that house itself display, 

But a faint shadow of uncertain light; 
Such as a lamp whose light doth fade away; 

Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night 
Does shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright. 

And over all sad Horror with grim hue 

Did always soar, beating his iron wings ; 
And after him owls and night-ravens flew, 

The hateful messengers of heavy things, 
Of death and dolour telling sad tidings; 

While sad Celleno, sitting on a clift, 
A song of bale and bitter sorrow sings, 

That heart of flint asunder could have rift; 
Which having ended, after him she flieth swift." 

The Cave of Despair is described with equal gloominess and 
power of fancy; and the fine moral declamation of the 

* " That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, 
Tho' they are made and moulded of things past, 
And give to Dust, that is a little gilt, 
More laud than gold o'er-dusted." 

Troilus and Cressida. 



32 English Literature 

owner of it,- on the evils of life, almost makes one in love 
with death. In the story of Malbecco, who is haunted by 
jealousy, and in vain strives to run away from his 
own thoughts — 

" High over hill and over dale he flies " — 

the truth of human passion and the preternatural ending are 
equally striking. — It is not fair to compare Spenser with 
Shakspeare, in point of interest. A fairer comparison 
would be with Comus ; and the result would not be unfa- 
vourable to Spenser. There is only one work of the same 
allegorical kind, which has more interest than Spenser 
(with scarcely less imagination) : and that is the Pilgrim's 
Progress. The three first books of the Faery Queen are 
very superior to the three last. One would think that Pope, 
who used to ask if any one had ever read the Faery Queen 
through, had only dipped into these last. The only things 
in them equal to the former, are the account of Talus, the 
Iron Man, and the delightful episode of Pastorella. 

The language of Spenser is full, and copious, to over- 
flowing : it is less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and 
is enriched and adorned with phrases borrowed from the 
different languages of Europe, both ancient and modern. 
He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of ex- 
pression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his 
complicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of 
his native language. This stanza, with alternate and re- 
peatedly recurring rhymes, is borrowed from the Italians. 
It is peculiarly fitted to their language, which abounds in 
similar vowel terminations, and is as little adapted to ours, 
from the stubborn, unaccommodating resistance which the 
consonant endings of the northern languages make to this 
sort of endless sing-song. — Not that I would, on that ac- 
count, part with the stanza of Spenser. We are, perhaps, 



Spenser 33 

indebted to this very necessity of finding out new forms 
of expression, and to the occasional faults to which it led, 
for a poetical language rich and varied and magnificent 
beyond all former, and almost all later example. His versi- 
fication is, at once, the most smooth and the most sounding 
in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, " in 
many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out " 
— that would cloy by their very sweetness, but that the 
ear is constantly relieved and enchanted by their continued 
variety of modulation — dwelling on the pauses of the action, 
or flowing on in a fuller tide of harmony with the move- 
ment of the sentiment. It has not the bold dramatic transi- 
tions of Shakspeare's blank verse, nor the high-raised tone 
of Milton's ; but it is the perfection of melting harmony, 
dissolving the soul in pleasure, or holding it captive in the 
chains of suspense. Spenser was the poet of our waking 
dreams; and he has invented not only a language, but a 
music of his own for them. The undulations are infinite, 
like those of the waves of the sea: but the efifect is still 
the same, lulling the senses into a deep oblivion of the 
jarring noises of the world, from which we have no wish 
to be ever recalled. 



Ill 

SHAKSPEARE 

The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the 
four first we come to — Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and 
Milton. There are no others that can really be put in 
competition with these. The two last have had justice 
done them by the voice of common fame. Their names 
are blazoned in the very firmament of reputation; while 
the two first, (though " the fault has been more in their 
stars than in themselves that they are underlings ") either 
never emerged far above the horizon, or were too soon 
involved in the obscurity of time. The three first of these 
are excluded from Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets (Shak- 
speare indeed is so from the dramatic form of his com- 
positions) : and the fourth, Milton, is admitted with a re- 
luctant and churlish welcome. 

In comparing these four writers together, it might be 
said that Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of 
real life; Spenser, as the poet of romance; Shakspeare, as 
the poet of nature (in the largest use of the term) : and 
Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer most frequently 
describes things as they are ; Spenser, as we wish them to 
be ; Shakspeare, as they would be ; and Milton as they ought 
to be. As poets, and as great poets, imagination, that is, 
the power of feigning things according to nature, was 
common to them all : but the principle or moving power, to 
which this faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was 
habit_, or inveterate prejudice; in Spenser, novelty, and the 

34 



Shakspeare 35' 

love of the marvellous ; in Shakspeare, it was the force of 
passion, combined with every variety of possible circum- 
stances; and in Milton, only with the highest. The char- 
acteristic of Chaucer is intensity ; of Spenser, remoteness ; 
of Milton,- elevation ; of Shakspeare, everything. — It has 
been said by some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished 
from the other dramatic writers of his day only by 
his wit; that they had all his other qualities but 
that ; that one writer had as much sense, another as 
much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, 
another the same depth of passion, and another as great 
a power of language. This statement is not true ; nor is 
the inference from it well-founded, even if it were. This 
person does not seem to have been aware that, upon his 
own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare's genius 
was its virtually including the genius of all the great men 
of his age, and not his difTering from them in one acci- 
dental particular. But to have done with such minute and 
literal trifling. 

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its 
generic quality, its power of communication with all other 
minds — so that it contained a universe of thought and 
feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias, or 
exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like 
any other man, but that he was Hke all other men. He 
was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He 
was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, 
or that they could become. He not only had in himself 
the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow 
them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable 
ramifications, through every change of fortune or conflict 
of passion, or turn of thought. He had " a mind reflecting 
ages past," and present : — all the people that ever lived are 
there. There was no respect of persons with him. His 



36 English Literature 

genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the 
wise and the fooHsh, the monarch and the beggar : " All 
corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states, maids, 
matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave," are hardly hid from 
his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity, 
changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with 
our purposes as with his ow^n. He turned the globe round 
for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, 
and the individuals as they passed, with their different 
concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and mo- 
tives — as well those that they knew, as those which they 
did not know, or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams 
of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his 
fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and came at his bid- 
ding. Harmless fairies " nodded to him, and did him 
curtesies : " and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the com- 
mand of '' his so potent art." The world of spirits lay 
open to him, like the world of real men and women : and 
there is the same truth in his delineations of the one as 
of the other ; for if the preternatural characters he describes 
could be supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and 
act, as he makes them. He had only to think of any thing 
in order to become that thing, with all the circumstances 
belonging to it. When he conceived of a character 
whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its 
thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by 
touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same 
objects, '' subject to the same skyey influences," the same 
local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which would occur 
in reality. Thus the character of Caliban not only stands 
before us with a language and manners of its own, but the 
scenery and situation of the enchanted island he inhabits, 
the traditions of the place, its strange noises, its hidden 
recesses, " his frequent haunts and ancient neighbourhood," 



Shakspeare 37 

are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all 
the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole " coheres 
semblably together " in time, place, and circumstance. In 
reading this author, you do not merely learn what his char- 
acters say, — you see their persons. By something expressed 
or understood, you are at no loss to decypher their peculiar 
physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the bye- 
play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet 
paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in 
the history of the person represented. So (as it has been 
ingeniously remarked) when Prospero describes himself as 
left alone in the boat with his daughter, the epithet which 
he applies to her, '' Me and thy crying self," flings the im- 
agination instantly back from the grown woman to the help- 
less condition of infancy, and places the first and most 
trying scene of his misfortunes before us, with all that 
he must have suffered in the interval. How well the silent 
anguish of Macduff is conveyed to the reader, by the friendly 
expostulation of Malcolm—'' What ! man, ne'er pull your 
hat upon your brows ! " Again, Hamlet, in the scene with 
Rosencrans and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes 
his fine soliloquy on life by saying^ " Man delights not me, 
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to 
say so." Which is explained by their answer — " My lord, 
we had no such stuff in our thoughts. But we smiled to 
think, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment 
the players shall receive from you, whom we met on the 
way : " — as if while Hamlet was making this speech, his two 
old schoolfellows from Wittenberg had been really standing 
by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of 
the players crossing their minds. It is not " a combination 
and a form " of words, a set speech or two, a preconcerted 
theory of a character, that will do this : but all the persons 
concerned must have been present in the poet's imagination, 



38 English Literature 

as at a kind of rehearsal ; and whatever would have passed 
through their minds on the occasion, and have been ob- 
served by others, passed through his, and is made known 
to the reader. — I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always 
gives the best directions for the costume and carriage of 
his heroes. Thus, to take one example, Ophelia gives the 
following account of Hamlet; and as OpheUa had seen 
Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken against 
that of any modern authority. 

" Ophelia. My lord, as I was reading in my closet, 
Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd, 
No hat upon his head, his stockings loose, 
Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle, 
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, 
And with a look so piteous, 
As if he had been sent from hell 
To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me. 

Polonms. Mad for thy love ! 

Oph. My lord, I do not know, 
But truly I do fear it. 

Pol. What said he? 

Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard. 
Then goes he to the length of all his arm; 
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow, 
He falls to such perusal of my face, 
As he would draw it : long staid he so ; 
At last, a little shaking of my arm, 
And thrice his head thus waving up and down. 
He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound, 
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk, 
And end his being. That done, he lets me go, 
And with his head over his shoulder turn'd, 
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes; 
For out of doors he went without their help. 
And to the last bended their light on me." 

Act II. Scene i. 

How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace 
and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we 
have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right- 



Shakspeare 39 

angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless 
it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to 
study the part of Ophelia. The account of OpheHa's death 
begins thus : 

" There is a willow hanging o'er a brook, 
That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream." 

Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power 
of mind which is as true to nature as itself. The leaves of 
the willow are, in fact, white underneath, and it is this part 
of them which would appear " hoary " in the reflection in 
the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the same 
faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present 
or absent, before the mind's eye, is observable in the speech 
of Cleopatra, when conjecturing what were the employ- 
ments of Antony in his absence : — " He's speaking now, or 
murmuring, where's my serpent of old Nile? " How fine to 
make Cleopatra have this consciousness of her own char- 
acter, and to make her feel that it is this for which Antony 
is in love with her ! She says, after the battle of Actium, 
when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, " It is my 
birth-day ; I had thought to have held it poor : but since my 
lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What other 
poet would have thought of such a casual resource of the 
imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of it? 
The thing happens in the play as it might have happened 
in fact. — That which, perhaps, more than any thing else 
distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from 
all others, is this wonderful truth and individuality of con- 
ception. Each of his characters is as much itself, and as 
absolutely independent of the rest, as well as of the author, 
as if they were living persons, not fictions of the mind. The 
poet may be said, for the time, to identify himself with the 



40 English Literature 

character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to 
another, Hke the same soul successively animating different 
bodies. By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws 
his imagination out of himself, and makes every word 
appear to proceed from the mouth of the person in whose 
name it is given. His plays alone are properly expressions 
of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters 
are real beings of flesh and blood; they speak like men, 
not like authors. One might suppose that he had stood 
by at the time, and overheard what passed. As in our 
dreams we hold conversations with ourselves, make re- 
marks, or communicate intelligence, and have no idea of 
the answer which we shall receive, and which we ourselves 
make, till we hear it : so the dialogues in Shakspeare are 
carried on without any consciousness of what is to follow, 
without any appearance of preparation or premeditation. 
The gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music 
borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by formal infer- 
ence and analogy, by climax and antithesis : all comes, . or 
seems to come, immediately from nature. Each object and 
circumstance exists in his mind, as it would have existed 
in reality : each several train of thought and feeling goes 
on of itself, without confusion or effort. In the world of 
his imagination, every thing has a life, a place, and being 
of its own ! 

Chaucer's characters are sufficiently distinct from one 
another, but they are too little varied in themselves, too 
much like identical propositions. They are consistent, but 
uniform; we get no new idea of them from first to last; 
they are not placed in different lights, nor are their sub- 
ordinate traits brought out in new situations; they are like 
portraits or physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing 
features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but 
that preserve the same unaltered air and attitude. Shak- 



Shakspeare 41 

speare's are historical figures, equally true and correct, but 
put into action, where every nerve and muscle is displayed 
in the struggle with others, with all the effect of collision 
and contrast, with every variety of light and shade. 
Chaucer's characters are narrative, Shakspeare's dramatic, 
Milton's epic. That is, Chaucer told only as much of his 
story as he pleased, as was required for a particular pur- 
pose. He answered for his characters himself. In Shak- 
speare they are introduced upon the stage, are liable to be 
asked all sorts of questions, and are forced to answer for 
themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of 
character. In Shakspeare there is a continual composition 
and decomposition of its elements, a fermentation of every 
particle in the whole mass, by its alternate affinity or 
antipathy to other principles which are brought in contact 
with it. Till the experiment is tried, we do not know the 
result, the turn which the character will take in its new 
circumstances. Milton took only a few simple principles of 
character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable 
grandeur, and refined them from every base alloy. His 
imagination, " nigh sphered in Heaven/' claimed kindred 
only with what he saw from that height^ and could raise 
to the same elevation^ with itself. He sat retired, and 
kept his state alone, '' playing with wisdom ; " while Shak- 
speare mingled with the crowd, and played the host, " to 
make society the sweeter welcome." 

The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his 
delineation of character. It is not some one habitual feel- 
ing or sentiment preying upon itself, growing out of itself, 
and moulding every thing to itself; it is passion modified 
by passion, by all the other feelings to which the individual 
is liable, and to which others are liable with him; subject to 
all the fluctuations of caprice and accident ; calling into 
play all the resources of the understanding and all the 



42 English Literature 

energies of the will; irritated by obstacles or yielding to 
them; rising from small beginnings to its utmost height; 
now drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now sunk in 
despair, now blown to air with a breath, now raging like 
a torrent. The human soul is made the sport of fortune, the 
prey of adversity : it is stretched on the wheel of destiny, 
in restless ecstacy. The passions are in a state of projec- 
tion. Years are melted down to moments, and every instant 
teems with fate. We know the results, we see the process. 
Thus after lago has been boasting to himself of the effect 
of his poisonous suggestions on ^ the mind of Othello, 
" which, with a little act upon the blood, will work like 
mines of sulphur," he adds — 

" Look where he comes ! not poppy, nor mandragora, 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, 
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou ow'dst yesterday." 

And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, 
crowned with his wrongs and raging for revenge ! The 
whole depends upon the turn of a thought. A word, a 
look, blows the spark of jealousy into a flame; and the 
explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The 
dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and 
Cassius, and nearly all those in Shakspeare, where the 
interest is wrought up to its highest pitch, afford examples 
of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The interest in 
Chaucer is quite different; it is Hke the course of a river, 
strong, and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the 
contrary, it is flke the sea, agitated this way and that, and 
loud-lashed by furious storms ; while in the still pauses of 
the blast, we distinguish only the cries of despair or the 
silence of death ! Milton, on the other hand, takes the 
imaginative part of passion — that which remains after the 



Shakspeare 43 

event, which the mind reposes on when all is over, which 
looks upon circumstances from the remotest elevation of 
thought and fancy, and abstracts them from the world of 
action to that of contemplation. The objects of dramatic 
poetry affect us by sympathy, by their nearness to our- 
selves, as they take us by surprise, or force us upon action, 
"while rage with rage doth sympathise:" the objects of 
epic poetry affect us through the medium of the imagina- 
tion, by magnitude and distance, by their permanence and 
universality. The one fill us with terror and pity, the 
other with admiration and delight. There are certain 
objects that strike the imagination, and inspire awe in the 
very idea of them, independently of any dramatic interest, 
that is, of any connection with the vicissitudes of human 
life. For instance, we cannot think of the pyramids of 
Egypt, of a Gothic ruin, or an old Roman encampment, 
without a certain emotion, a sense of power and sublimity 
coming over the mind. The heavenly bodies that hang over 
our heads wherever we go, and '' in their untroubled element 
shall shine when we are laid in dust, and all our cares for- 
gotten," affect us in the same way. Thus Satan's address 
to the Sun has an epic, not a dramatic interest; for though 
the second person in the dialogue makes no answer and feels 
no concern, yet the eye of that vast luminary is upon him, 
like the eye of heaven, and seems conscious of what he 
says, like an universal presence. Dramatic poetry and epic, 
in their perfection, indeed, approximate to and strengthen 
one another. Dramatic poetry borrows aid from the dignity 
of persons and things, as the heroic does from human pas- 
sion, but in theory they are distinct. — When Richard IL 
calls for the looking-glass to contemplate his faded majesty 
in it, and bursts into that affecting exclamation : *' Oh, that 
I were a mockery-king of snow, to melt away before the 
sun of Bolingbroke," we have here the utmost force of 



44 English Literature 

human passion, combined with the ideas of regal splendour 
and fallen power. When Milton says of Satan: 

" — His form had not yet lost 
All her original brightness, nor appear'd 
Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess 
Of glory obscur'd;" — 

the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the 
sense of irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, 
is perfect. 

The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that 
' it is all experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion 
of natural sensibility; or what is worse, to divest it both 
of imaginary splendour and human passion, to surround 
the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and devouring 
egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shak- 
speare did not so understand poetry. They gave a more 
liberal interpretation both to nature and art. They did 
not do all they could to get rid of the one and the other, 
to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of their own 
Minds. They owe their power over the human mind to 
their having had a deeper sense than others of what was 
grand in the objects of nature, or affecting In the events of 
human life. But to the men I speak of there is nothing 
interesting, nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the 
fall of gods or of great men is the same. They do not 
enter into the feeling. They cannot understand the terms. 
They are even debarred from the last poor, paltry consola- 
tion of an unmanly triumph over fallen greatness; for their 
minds reject, with a convulsive effort and intolerable loath- 
ing, the very idea that there ever was, or was thought to 
be, any thing superior to themselves. All that has ever 
excited the attention or admiration of the world they look 
upon with the most perfect indifference; and they are 



Shakspeare 45 

surprised to find that the world repays their indifference 
with scorn. " Wfth what measure they mete, it has been 
meted to them again." 

Shakspeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as 
his conception of character or passion. " It glances from 
heaven to earth, from earth to heaven." Its movement is 
rapid and devious. It unites the most opposite extremes ; 
or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own feats, " puts a girdle 
round about the earth in forty minutes." He seems always 
hurrying from his subject, even while describing it; but the 
stroke, like the lightning's, is sure as it is sudden. He 
takes the widest possible range, but from that very range 
he has his choice of the greatest variety and aptitude of 
materials. He brings together images the most alike, but 
placed at the greatest distance from each other ; that is, 
found in circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude. From 
the remoteness of his combinations, and the celerity with 
which they are effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly 
together. The more the thoughts are strangers to each 
other, and the longer they have been kept asunder, the more 
intimate does their union seem to become. Their felicity 
is equal to their force. Their likeness is made more dazzling 
by their novelty. They startle, and take the fancy prisoner 
in the same instant. I will mention one or two which are 
very striking, and not much known, out of Troilus and 
Cressida. yEneas says to Agamemnon, 

" I ask that I may waken reverence, 
And on the cheek be ready with a blush 
Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes 
The youthful Phoebus." 

Ulysses urging Achilles to shew himself in the field, says — 

" No man is the lord of any thing. 
Till he communicate his parts to others : 



46 English Literature 

Nor doth he of himself know them for aught, 

Till he behold them formed in the applause, . 

Where they're extended! which like an arch reverberates 

The voice again, or like a gate of steel, 

Fronting the sun, receives and renders back 

Its figure and its heat." 



Patroclus gives the indolent warrior the same advice. 

" Rouse yourself ; and the weak wanton Cupid 
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, 
And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane 
Be shook to air." 



Shakspeare's language and versification lare like the rest of 
him. He has a magic power over words : they come winged 
at his bidding; and seem to know their places. They are 
struck out at a heat, on the spur of the occasion, and have 
all the truth and vividness which arise from an actual 
impression of the objects. His epithets and single phrases 
are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, fired by 
the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is 
hieroglyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. 
It abounds in sudden transitions and elliptical expressions. 
This is the source of his mixed metaphors, which are only 
abbreviated forms of speech. These, however, give no pain 
from long custom. They have, in fact, become idioms in 
the language. They are the building, and not the scaffold- 
ing to thought. We take the meaning and effect of a well- 
known passage entire, and no more stop to scan and spell 
out the particular words and phrases, than the syllables of 
which they are composed. Iri trying to recollect any other 
author, one sometimes stumbles, in case of failure, on a 
word as good. In Shakspeare, any other word but the 
true one, is sure to be wrong. If any body, for instance, 
could not recollect the words of the following description, 



Shakspeare 47 

" — Light thickens, 
And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood," 

he would be greatly at a loss to substitute others for them 
equally expressive of the feehng. These remarks, how- 
ever^ are strictly applicable only to the impassioned parts 
of Shakspeare's language, which flowed from the warmth 
and originality of his imagination, and were his own. The 
language used for prose conversation and ordinary business 
is sometimes technical, and involved in the affectation of 
the time. Compare, for example, Othello's apology to the 
senate, relating " his whole course of love," with some of 
the preceding parts relating to his appointment, and the 
official dispatches from Cyprus. In this respect, " the busi- 
ness of the state does him offence." — His versification is 
no less powerful, sweet, and varied. It has every occasional 
excellence, of sullen intricacy, crabbed and perplexed, or 
of the smoothest and loftiest expansion — from the ease and 
familiarity of measured conversation to the lyrical sounds 



'' — Of ditties highl}^ penned, 
Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower, 
With ravishing division to her lute." 



It IS the only blank verse in the language, except Milton's, 
that for itself is readable. It is not stately and uniformly 
swelling like his, but varied and broken by the inequalities 
of the ground it has to pass over in its uncertain course, 



And so by many winding nooks it strays, 
With willing sport to the wild ocean." 



It remains to speak of the faults of Shakspeare. They 
are not so many or so great as they have been represented ; 
what there are, are chiefly owing to the following causes ; — 



48 English Literature 

The universality of his genius was, perhaps, a disadvantage 
to his single works ; the variety of his resources sometimes 
diverting him from applying them to the most effectual 
purposes. He might be said to combine the powers of 
^schylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and Rabelais, in his 
own mind. If he had been only half what he was, he would 
perhaps have appeared greater. The natural ease and indif- 
ference of his temper made him sometimes less scrupulous 
than he might have been. He is relaxed and careless in 
critical places ; he is in earnest throughout only in Timon, 
Macbeth, and Lear. Again, he had no models of acknowl- 
edged excellence constantly in view to stimulate his efforts, 
and by all that appears, no love of fame. He wrote for the 
'* great vulgar and the small," in his time, not for posterity. 
Tf Queen Ehzabeth and the maids of honour laughed 
heartily at his worst jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery 
were silent at his best passages, he went home satisfied, 
and slept the next night well. He did not trouble himself 
about Voltaire's criticisms. He was willing to take advan- 
tage of the ignorance of the age in many things ; and if 
his plays pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. 
•His very facility of production would make him set less 
value on his own excellences, and not care to distinguish 
nicely between what he did well or ill. His blunders in 
chronology and geography do not amount to above half 
a dozen, and they are offences against chronology and 
geography, not against poetry. As to the unities, he was 
right in setting them at defiance. He was fonder of puns 
than became so great a man. His barbarisms were those 
of his age. His genius was his own. He had no objection 
to float down with the stream of common taste and opinion : 
he rose above it by his own buoyancy, and an impulse which 
he could not keep under, in spite of himself or others, and 
" his delights did shew most dolphin-like." 



Shakspeare 49 

He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy; and 
his tragedies are better than his comedies, because tragedy 
is better than comedy. His female characters, which have 
been found fault with as insipid, are the finest in the world. 
Lastly, Shakspeare was the least of a coxcomb of any one 
that ever Hved, and much of a gentleman. 



IV 
THE CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS 

Cymbeline 

Cymbeline is one of the most delightful of Shakspeare's 
historical plays. It may be considered as a dramatic ro- 
mance, in which the most striking parts of the story are 
thrown into the form of a dialogue, and the intermediate 
circumstances are explained by the different speakers, as 
occasion renders necessary. The action is less concentrated 
in consequence; but the interest becomes more aerial and 
refined from the principle of perspective introduced into 
the subject by the imaginary changes of scene, as well as 
by the length of time it occupies. The reading of this 
play is like going a journey with some uncertain object at 
the end of it, and in which the suspense is kept up and 
heightened by the long intervals between each action. 
Though the events are scattered over such an extent of 
surface, and relate to such a variety of characters, yet the 
links which bind the different interests of the story together 
are never entirely broken. The most straggling and seem- 
ingly casual incidents are contrived in such a manner as to 
lead at last to the most complete developement of the catas- 
trophe. The ease and conscious unconcern with which this 
is effected only makes the skill more wonderful. The 
business of the plot evidently thickens in the last act : the 
story moves forward with increasing rapidity at every step ; 
its various ramifications are drawn from the most distant 
points to the same centre; the principal characters are 

50 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 51 

brought together, and placed in very critical situations ; 
and the fate of almost every person in the drama is made 
to depend on the solution of a single circumstance — the 
answer of lachimo to the question of Imogen respecting 
the obtaining of the ring from Posthumus. Dr. Johnson 
is of opinion that Shakspeare was generally inattentive to 
the winding-up of his plots. We think the contrary is 
true; and we might cite in proof of this remark not only 
the present play, but the conclusion of Lear, of Romeo and 
Juliet, of Macbeth, of Othello, even of Hamlet, and of 
other plays of less moment, in which the last act is crowded 
with decisive events brought about by natural and striking 
means. 

The pathos in Cymbeline is not violent or tragical, but 
of the most pleasing and amiable kind. A certain tender 
gloom overspreads the whole. Posthumus is the ostensible 
hero of the piece, but its greatest charm is the character 
of Imogen. Posthumus is only interesting from the in- 
terest she takes in him ; and she is only interesting herself 
from her tenderness and constancy to her husband. It is 
the peculiar excellence of Shakspeare's heroines, that they 
seem to exist only in their attachment to others. They 
are pure abstractions of the affections. We think as little 
of their persons as they do themselves, because we are let 
into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. 
We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look 
at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. No one 
ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the 
sense of v/eakness leaning on the strength of its affections 
for support, so well as Shakspeare — no one ever so well 
painted natural tenderness free from affectation and dis- 
guise — no one else ever so well shev/ed how delicacy and 
timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and 
extravagant; for the romance of his heroines (in which 



52 English Literature 

they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices 
of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant 
to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when 
to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His 
women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there 
is nothing so logical as passion. They knew their own 
minds exactly; and only followed up a favourite purpose, 
which they had sworn to with their tongues, and which 
was engraven on their hearts, into its untoward conse- 
quences. They were the prettiest little set of martyrs and 
confessors on record. — Gibber, in speaking of the early 
English stage, accounts for the want of prominence and 
theatrical display in Shakspeare's female characters from 
the circumstance, that women in those days were not 
allowed to play the parts of women, which made it neces- 
sary to keep them a good deal in the back-ground. Does 
not this state of manners itself, which prevented their 
exhibiting themselves in public, and confined them to the 
relations and charities of domestic Hfe, afford a truer ex- 
planation of the matter? His women are certainly very 
unlike stage-heroines ; the reverse of tragedy-queens. 

We have almost as great an affection for Imogen as she 
had for Posthumus ; and she deserves it better. Of all 
Shakspeare's women she is perhaps the most tender and 
the most artless. Her incredulity in the opening scene 
with lachimo, as to her husband's infidelity, is much the 
same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe Othello's 
jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the 
picture is only, " My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." 
Her readiness to pardon lachimo's false imputations and 
his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes ; 
and may shew that where there is a real attachment to 
virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous 
or affected antipathy to vice. The scene in which Pisanio 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 53 

gives Imogen his master's letter, accusing- her of incon- 
tinency on the treacherous suggestions of lachimo, is as 
touching as it is possible for anything to be : — 

" Pisanio. What cheer, Madam? 

Imogen. False to his bed! What is it to be false? 
To lie in watch there, and to think on him? 
To weep 'twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature, 
To break it with a fearful dream of him, 
And cry myself awake? That's false to 's bed, is it? 

Pisanio. Alas, good lady ! 

Imogen. I false? thy conscience witness, lachimo, 
Thou didst accuse him of incontinency. 
Thou then look'dst like a villain : now methinks. 
Thy favour's good enough. Some Jay of Italy, 
Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him : 
Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion. 
And for I am richer than to hang by th' walls, 
I must be ript; to pieces with me. Oh, 
Men's vows are women's traitors. All good seeming 
By thy revolt, oh husband, shall be thought 
Put on for villainy : not born where't grows, 
- But worn a bait for ladies. 

Pisanio. Good Madam, hear me — 

Imogen. Talk thy tongue weary, speak : 
I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear, 
Therein false struck, can take no greater wound, 
Nor tent to bottom that." 



When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his mis- 
tress, puts her in a way to Hve, she says, 

" Why, good fellow. 
What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live? 
Or in my life what comfort, when I am 
Dead to my husband?" 

Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy's 
clothes, and suggests '' a course pretty and full in view," 
by which she may " happily be near the residence of Pos- 
thumus," she exclaims, 



I 



54 English Literature 

" Oh, for such means, 
Though peril to my modesty, not death on't, 
I would adventure." 

And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells 
her she must change 

" Fear and niceness, 

The handmaids of all women, or more truly, 
Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage, 
Ready in gibes, quick-answer'd, saucy, and 
As quarrellous as the weazel " 

she interrupts him hastily: — 

" Nay, be brief ; 
I see into thy end, and am almost 
A man already." 

In her journey thus disguised to Milford-Haven, she 
loses her guide and her way ; and unbosoming her com- 
plaints, says beautifully — 

" My dear lord, 

Thou art one of the false ones; now I think on thee, 
My hunger's gone; but even before, I was 
At point to sink for food." 

She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of 
Posthumus, and engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a 
Roman officer, when she has done all due obsequies to him 
whom she calls her former master — 

" And when 

With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew'd his grave, 

And on it said a century of pray'rs. 

Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh, 

And leaving so his service, follow you, 

So please you entertain me." 

Now this is the very religion of love. She all along 
rehes little on her personal charms, which she fears may 



The Characters of Shakspeare^s Plays 55 

have been eclipsed by some painted Jay of Italy; she relies 
on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, 
her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty 
is excited with as little consciousness as possible on her 
part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her, 
one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead. 
Arviragus thus addresses her — 

" With fairest flowers, 

While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
I'll sweeten thy sad grave ; thou shalt not lack 
The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor 
The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander, 
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath." 

The yellow lachimo gives another thus, when he steals 
into her bedchamber : — 

" Cytherea, 

How bravely thou becom'st thy bed ! Fresh lily, 
And whiter than the sheets ! That I might touch — 
But kiss, one kiss — 'Tis her breathing that 
Perfumes the chamber thus : the flame o' th' taper 
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids 
To see th' enclosed lights now canopied 
Under the windows, white and azure, laced 
With blue of Heav'ns own tinct — on her left breast 
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
r th' bottom of a cowslip." 

There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last 
image, a rich surfeit of the fancy, — as that well-known 
passage beginning, " Me of my lawful pleasure she re- 
strained, and prayed me oft forbearance," sets a keener 
edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self- 
denial. 

The character of Cloten, the conceited, booby lord, and 
rejected lover of Imogen, though not very agreeable in 



56 English Literature 

itself, and at present obsolete, is drawn with much humour 
and quaint extravagance. The description which Imogen 
gives of his unwelcome addresses to her — " Whose love-suit 
hath been to me as fearful as a siege " — is enough to cure 
the most ridiculous lover of his folly. It is remarkable 
that though Cloten makes so poor a figure in love, he is 
described as assuming an air of consequence as the Queen's 
son in a council of state, and with all the absurdity of his 
person and manners, is not without shrewdness in his 
observations. So true is it that folly is as often owing 
to a want of proper sentiments as to a want of under- 
standing! The exclamation of the ancient critic — Oh 
Menander and Nature, which of you copied from the 
other ! would not be misapplied to Shakspeare. 

The other characters in this play are represented with 
great truth and accuracy, and as it happens in most of the 
author's works, there is not only the utmost keeping in 
each separate character; but in the casting of the different 
parts, and their relation to one another, there is an affinity 
and harmony, like what we may observe in the gradations 
of colour in a picture. The striking and powerful contrasts 
in which Shakspeare abounds could not escape observation ; 
but the use he makes of the principle of analogy to recon- 
cile the greatest diversities of character and to maintain 
a continuity of feeling throughout, has not been sufficiently 
attended to. In Cymbeline, for instance, the principal 
interest arises out of the unalterable fidelity of Imogen 
to her husband under the most trying circumstances. 
Now the other parts of the picture are filled up with 
subordinate examples of the same feeling, variously 
modified by different situations, and applied to the pur- 
poses of virtue or vice. The plot is aided by the amorous 
importunities of Cloten, by the persevering determination 
of lachimo to conceal the defeat of his project by a daring 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 57 

imposture : the faithful attachment of Pisanio to his mis- 
tress is an affecting accompaniment to the whole ; the obsti- 
nate adherence to his purpose in Bellarius, who keeps the 
fate of the young princes so long a secret in resentment for 
the ungrateful return to his former services, the incorrigi- 
ble wickedness of the Queen, and even the bhnd uxorious 
confidence of Cymbeline, are all so many lines of the same 
story, tending to the same point. The effect of this coin- 
cidence is rather felt than observed ; and as the impression 
exists unconsciously in the mind of the reader, so it proba- 
bly arose in the same manner in the mind of the author, 
not from design, but from the force of natural association, 
a particular train of thought suggesting different inflec- 
tions of the same predominant feeling, melting into, and 
strengthening one another, like chords in music. 

The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus, 
and the romantic scenes in which they appear, are a fine 
relief to the intrigues and artificial refinements of the court 
from which they are banished. Nothing can surpass the 
wildness and simplicity of the descriptions of the mountain 
life they lead. They follow the business of huntsmen, not of 
shepherds ; and this is in keeping with the spirit of adven- 
ture and uncertainty in the rest of the story, and with the 
scenes in which they are afterwards called on to act. How 
admirably the youthful fire and impatience to emerge from 
their obscurity in the young princes is opposed to the cooler 
calculations and prudent resignation of their more experi- 
enced counsellor ! How well the disadvantages of knowl- 
edge and of ignorance, of solitude and society, are placed 
against each other! 

"' Guiderius. Out of your proof you speak : we poor unfledg'd 
Have never wing'd from view o' th' nest; nor know not 
What air's from home. Haply this life is best, 
If quiet life is best; sweeter to you 



58 English Literature 

That have a sharper known ; well corresponding 
With your stiff age : but unto us it is 
A cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed, 
A prison for a debtor, that not dares 
To stride a limit. 

Arviragus. What should we speak of 
When we are old as you? When we shall hear 
The rain and wind beat dark December ! How, 
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse 
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing. 
We are beastly; subtle as the fox for prey, 
Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat: 
Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage 
We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird, 
And sing our bondage freely." 

The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation is hardly 
satisfactory; for nothing can be an answer to hope, or the 
passion of the mind for unknown good, but experience. — 
The forest of Arden in As yon like it can alone compare 
with the mountain scenes in Cymbeline : yet how different 
the contemplative quiet of the one from the enterprising 
boldness and precarious mode of subsistence in the other! 
Shakspeare not only lets us into the minds of his char- 
acters, but gives a tone and colour to the scenes he describes 
from the feehngs of their supposed inhabitants. He at the 
same time preserves the utmost propriety of action and pas- 
sion, and gives all their local accompaniments. If he was 
equal to the greatest things, he was not above an attention 
to the smallest. Thus th© gallant sportsmen in Cymbeline 
have to encounter the abrupt declivities of hill and valley: 
Touchstone and Audrey jog along a level path. The deer 
in Cymbeline are only regarded as objects of prey, " The 
game's a-foot," etc. — with Jaques they are fine subjects to 
moralise upon at leisure, " under the shade of melancholy 
boughs." 

We cannot take leave of this play, which is a favourite 
with us, without noticing some occasional touches of nat- 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 59 

ural piety and morality. We may allude here to the open- 
ing of the scene in which Bellarius instructs the young 
princes to pay their orisons to heaven : 

" See, boys ! this gate 

Instructs you how t' adore the Heav'ns ; and bows you 
To morning's holy office. 

Giiiderius. Hail, Heav'n ! 

Arviragiis. Hail, Heav'n ! 

Bellarius. Now for our mountain-sport, up to yon hill." 

What a grace and unaffected spirit of piety breathes in 
this passage ! In like manner, one of the brothers says to 
the other, when about to perform the funeral rites to 
Fidele, 

" Nay, Cadwall, we must lay his head to the east ; 
My Father hath a reason for't " — 

—as if some allusion to the doctrines of the Christian faith 
had been casually dropped in conversation by the old man, 
and had been no farther inquired into. 

Shakspeare's morality is introduced in the same simple, 
unobtrusive manner. Imogen w^ill not let her companions 
stay away from the chase to attend her when sick, and 
gives her reason for it — 

" Stick to your journal course; the breach of custom 
Is breach of all! " 

When the Queen attempts to disguise her motives for 
procuring the poison from Cornelius, by saying she means 
to try its effects on " creatures not worth the hanging," 
his answer conveys at once a tacit reproof of her hypocrisy, 
and a useful lesson of humanity — 

" Your Highness 

Shall from this practice but make hard your heart." 



6o English Literature 



Macbeth 

" The poet's eye in a fine f renz}^ rolling 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; 
And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 



Macbeth and Lear, Othello and Hamlet, are usually 
reckoned Shakspeare's four principal tragedies. Lear 
stands first for the profound intensity of the passion ; Mac- 
beth for the wildness of the imagination and the rapidity 
of the action; Othello for the progressive interest and 
powerful alternations of feeling: Hamlet for the refined 
development of thought and sentiment. If the force of 
genius shewn in each of these works is astonishing, their 
variety is not less so. They are like different creations of 
the same mind, not one of wdiich has the slightest refer- 
ence to the rest. This distinctness and originality is indeed 
the necessary consequence of truth and nature. Shak- 
speare's genius alone appeared to possess the resources of 
nature. He is " your only tragedy-maker." His plays have 
the force of things upon the mind. What he represents 
is brought home to the bosom as a part of our experience, 
implanted in the memory as if we had known the places, 
persons, and things of which he treats. Macbeth is like 
a record of a preternatural and tragical event. It has the 
rugged severity of an old chronicle with all that the imag- 
ination of the poet can engraft upon traditional belief. 
The castle of Macbeth, round which '' the air smells woo- 
ingly/' and where '' the temple-haunting martlet builds," 
has a real subsistence in the mind ; the Weird Sisters meet 
us in person on " the blasted heath ; " the '' air-drawn dag- 
ger " moves slowly before our eyes ; the " gracious Dun- 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 6i 

can," the '' blood-boultered Banquo " stand before us ; all 
that passed through the mind of Macbeth passes, without 
the loss of a tittle, through our's. All that could actually 
take place, and all that is only possible to be conceived, what 
was said and what was done, the workings of passion, the 
spells of magic, are brought before us with the same abso- 
lute truth and vividness. — Shakspeare excelled in the open- 
ings of his plays : that of Macbeth is the most striking of 
any. The wildness of the scenery, the sudden shifting of 
the situations and characters, the bustle, the expectations 
excited, are equally extraordinary. From the first entrance 
of the Witches and the description of them when they meet 
Macbeth, 

"What are these 

So wither'd and so wild in their attire, 

That look not like the inhabitants of th' earth 

And yet are on't? " 

the mind is prepared for all that follows. 

This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty imagina- 
tion it displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the 
action; and the one is made the moving principle of the 
other. The overwhelming pressure of preternatural agency 
urges on the tide of human passion with redoubled force. 
Macbeth himself appears driven along by the violence of 
his fate like a vessel drifting before a storm : he reels to 
and fro like a drunken man ; he staggers under the weight 
of his own purposes and the suggestions of others ; he 
stands at bay with his situation ; and from the superstitious 
awe and breathless suspense into which the communications 
of the Weird Sisters throw him, is hurried on with daring 
impatience to verify their predictions, and with impious and 
bloody hand to tear aside the veil which hides the uncer- 
tainty of the future. He is not equal to the struggle with 
fate and conscience. He now " bends up each corporal 



62 English Literature 

instrument to the terrible feat ; " at other times his heart 
misgives him, aryd he is cowed and abashed by his success. 
" The deed, no less than the attempt, confounds him." His 
mind is assailed by the stings of remorse, and full of 
'' preternatural solicitings." His speeches and sohloquies 
are dark riddles on human life, baffling solution, and en- 
tangling him in their labyrinths. In thought he is absent 
and perplexed, sudden and desperate in act, from a distrust 
of his own resolution. His energy springs from the anx- 
iety and agitation of his mind. His blindly rushing for- 
ward on the objects of his ambition and revenge, or his 
recoiling from them, equally betrays the harassed state of 
his feelings. — This part of his character is admirably set 
ofif by being brought in connection with that of Lady Mac- 
beth, whose obdurate strength of will and masculine firm- 
ness give her the ascendancy over her husband's faultering 
virtue. She at once seizes on the opportunity that offers 
for the accompHshment of all their wished-for greatness, 
and never flinches from her object till all is over. The 
magnitude of her resolution almost covers the magnitude 
of her guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, 
but whom we fear more than we hate. She does not excite 
our loathing and abhorrence like Regan and Gonerill. She 
is only wicked to gain a great end ; and is perhaps more 
distinguished by her commanding presence of mind and 
inexorable self-will, which do not suffer her to be diverted 
from a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and 
womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her heart or want 
of natural affections. The impression which her lofty deter- 
mination of character makes on the mind of Macbeth is well 
described where he exclaims, 

"Bring forth men children only; 

For thy undaunted mettle should compose 
Nothing but males ! " 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 63 

Nor do the pains she is at to '' screw his courage to the 
sticking-place," the reproach to him, not to be "lost so 
poorly in himself," the assurance that " a little water clears 
them of this deed," shew anything but her greater con- 
sistency in depravity. Her strong-nerved ambition fur- 
nishes ribs of steel to " the sides of his intent ; " and she is 
herself wound up to the execution of her baneful project 
with the same unshrinking fortitude in crime, that in other 
circumstances she would probably have shewn patience in 
suffering. The deliberate sacrifice of all other considera- 
tions to the gaining " for their future days and nights sole 
sovereign sway and masterdom," by the murder of Duncan, 
is gorgeously expressed in her invocation on hearing of 
" his fatal entrance under her battlements : " — 



" Come all you spirits 

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here : 
And fill me, from the crown to th' toe, top-full 
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, 
Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
That no compunctious visitings of nature 
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts, 
And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers, 
Wherever in your sightless substances 
You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night ! 
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark, 
To cry, hold, hold ! " 



When she first hears that ''Duncan comes there to sleep" 
she is so overcome by the news, which is beyond her utmost 
expectations, that she answers the messenger, " Thou'rt 
mad to say it : " and on receiving her husband's account of 
the predictions of the Witches, conscious of his instability 
of purpose, and that her presence is necessary to goad him 



64 English Literature 

on to the consummation of his promised greatness, she 
exclaims' — 

" Hie thee hither, 

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, 
And chastise with the valour of my tongue 
All that impedes thee from the golden round, 
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
To have thee crowned withal." 

This swelling exultation and keen spirit of triumph, this 
uncontroulable eagerness of anticipation, which seems to 
dilate her form and take possession of all her faculties, this 
solid, substantial flesh and blood display of passion, exhibit 
a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted, gratuitous, servile 
malignity of the Witches, who are equally instrumental in 
urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of mischief, 
and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. 
They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, ma- 
licious from their impotence of enjoyment, enamoured of 
destruction, because they are themselves unreal, abortive, 
half-existences — who become sublime from their exemption 
from all human sympathies and contempt for all human 
affairs, as Lady Macbeth does by the force of passion ! 
Her fault seems to have been an excess of that strong 
principle of self-interest and family aggrandisement, not 
amenable to the common feelings of compassion and jus- 
tice, which is so marked a feature in barbarous nations 
and times. A passing reflection of this kind, on the resem- 
blance of the sleeping king to her father, alone prevents 
her from slaying Duncan with her own hand. 

In speaking of the character of Lady Macbeth, we ought 
not to pass over Mrs. Siddons's manner of acting that part. 
We can conceive of nothing grander. It was something 
above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior 
order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world 



I 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 65 

with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on 
her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a 
shrine ; she was tragedy personified. In coming on in the 
sleeping-scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was 
shut. She was fike a person bewildered and unconscious 
of what she did. Her lips moved involuntarily — all her 
gestures were involuntary and mechanical. She glided on 
and off the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in 
that character was an event in every one's life, not to be 
forgotten. 

The dramatic beauty of the character of Duncan, which 
excites the respect and pity even of his murderers, has 
been often pointed out. It forms a picture of itself. An 
instance of the author's power of giving a striking effect 
to a common reflection, by the manner of introducing it, 
occurs in a speech of Duncan, complaining of his having 
been deceived in his opinion of the Thane of Cawdor, at 
the very moment that he is expressing the most unbounded 
confidence in the loyalty and services of Macbeth. 

" There is no art 
To find the mind's construction in the face: 
He was a gentleman, on whom I built 
An absolute trust. 

O worthiest cousin, (addressing himself to Macbeth.) 
The sin of my Ingratitude e'en now 
Was great upon me," etc. 

Another passage to shew that Shakspeare lost sight of 
nothing that could in any way give relief or heightening 
to his subject, is the conversation which takes place between 
Banquo and Fleance immediately before the murder-scene 
of Duncan. 

"Banquo. How goes the night, boy? 

Fleance. The moon is down: I have not heard the clock. 

Danqiio. And she goes down at twelve. 

Fleance. I take't, 'tis later, Sir. 



66 English Literature 

Banquo. Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry in heav'n, 
Their candles are all out. — 
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, 
And yet I would not sleep : Merciful Powers, 
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature 
Gives way to in repose." 

In like manner, a fine idea is given of the gloomy com- 
ing on of evening, just as Banquo is going to be assas- 
sinated. 

" Light thickens and the crow 
Makes wing to the rooky wood." 



" Now spurs the lated traveller apace 
To gain the timely inn." 

Macbeth (generally speaking) is done upon a stronger 
and more systematic principle of contrast than any other 
of Shakspeare's plays. It moves upon the verge of an 
abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. 
The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is 
a huddhng together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite 
natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is 
nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. 
The lights and shades are laid on with a determined hand; 
the transitions from triumph to despair, from the height of 
terror to the repose of death, are sudden and startling; 
every passion brings in its fellow-contrary, and the thoughts 
pitch and jostle against each other as in the dark. The 
whole play is an unruly chaos of strange and forbidden 
things, where the ground rocks under our feet. Shak- 
speare's genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the 
farthest bounds of nature and passion. This circumstance 
will account for the abruptness and violent antitheses of the 
style, the throes and labour which run through the expres- 
sion, and from defects will turn them into beauties. " So 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 6y 

fair and foul a day I have not seen," etc. " Such welcome 
and unwelcome news together." " Men's lives are like the 
flowers in their caps, dying or ere they sicken." " Look 
like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it." The 
scene before the castle-gate follows the appearance of the 
Witches on the heath, and is followed by a midnight murder. 
Duncan is cut off betimes by treason leagued with witch- 
craft, and Macduff is ripped untimely from his mother's 
womb to avenge his death. Macbeth, after the death of 
Banquo, wishes for his presence in extravagant terms, '' To 
him and all we thirst," and when his ghost appears, cries 
out, *' Avaunt and quit my sight," and being gone, he is 
'' himself again." Macbeth resolves to get rid of Macduff, 
that '' he may sleep in spite of thunder ; " and cheers his 
wife on the doubtful intelligence of Banquo's taking-off 
with the encouragement — " Then be thou jocund : ere the 
bat has flown his cloistered flight; ere to black Hecate's 
summons the shard-born beetle has rung night's yawn- 
ing peal, there shall be done — a deed of dreadful note." 
In Lady Macbeth's speech '* Had he not resembled my 
father as he slept, I had done 't," there is murder and fiHal 
piety together ; and in urging him to fulfil his vengeance 
against the defenceless king, her thoughts spare the blood 
neither of infants nor old age. The description of the 
Witches is full of the same contradictory principle ; they 
" rejoice when good kings bleed," they are neither of the 
earth nor the air, but both ; they *' should be women, but 
their beards forbid it ; " they take all the pains possible to 
lead Macbeth on to the height of his ambition, only to 
betray him " in deeper consequence," and after showing 
him all the pomp of their art, discover their malignant de- 
light in his disappointed hopes, by that bitter taunt, " Why 
stands Macbeth thus amazedly ? " We might multiply such 
instances every where. 



68 English Literature 

The leading features in the character of Macbeth are 
striking enough, and they form what may be thought at first 
only a bold, rude, Gothic outline. By comparing it with 
other characters of the same author we shall perceive the 
absolute truth and identity which is observed in the midst 
of the giddy whirl and rapid career of events. Macbeth in 
Shakspeare no more loses his identity of character in the 
fluctuations of fortune or the storm of passion, than Mac- 
beth in himself would have lost the identity of his person. 
Thus he is as distinct a being from Richard III. as it is 
possible to imagine, though these two characters in common 
hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet, would 
have been a repetition of the same general idea, more or 
less exaggerated. For both are tyrants, usurpers, mur- 
derers, both aspiring and ambitious, both courageous, cruel, 
treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and consti- 
tution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances. 
Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind, and 
naturally incapable of good. Macbeth is full of " the milk 
of human kindness," is frank, sociable, generous. He is 
tempted to the commission of guilt by golden opportunities, 
by the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. 
Fate and metaphysical aid conspire against his virtue and 
his loyalty. Richard on the contrary needs no prompter, 
but wades through a series of crimes to the height of his 
ambition from the ungovernable violence of his temper and 
a reckless love of mischief. He is never gay but in the 
prospect or in the success of his villainies: Macbeth is full 
of horror at the thoughts of the murder of Duncan, which 
he is with difficulty prevailed on to commit, and of remorse 
after its perpetration. Richard has no mixture of common 
humanity in his composition, no regard to kindred or pos- 
terity, he owns no fellowship with others, he is " himself 
alone." Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of sympathy, 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 69 

is accessible to pity, is even made in some measure the dupe 
of his uxoriousness^ ranks the loss of friends, of the cordial 
love of his followers, and of his good name, among the 
causes which have made him weary of life, and regrets that 
he has ever seized the crown by unjust means, since he 
cannot transmit it to his posterity — 

" For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind — 
For them the gracious Duncan have I murther'd, 
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings." 

In the agitation of his mind, he envies those whom he has 
sent to peace. " Duncan is in his grave ; after life's fitful 
fever he sleeps well." — It is true, he becomes more callous 
as he plunges deeper in guilt, " direness is thus rendered 
familiar to his slaughterous thoughts," and he in the end 
anticipates his wife in the boldness and bloodiness of his 
enterprises, while she for want of the same stimulus of 
action, " is troubled with thick-coming fancies that rob her 
of her rest," goes mad and dies. Macbeth endeavours to 
escape from reflection on his crimes by repelling their 
consequences, and banishes remorse for the past by the 
meditation of future mischief. This is not the principle 
of Richard's cruelty, which displays the wanton malice of 
a fiend as much as the frailty of human passion. Macbeth 
is goaded on to acts of violence and retaliation by necessity ; 
to Richard, blood is a pastime. — There are other decisive 
differences inherent in the two characters. Richard may 
be regarded as a man of the world, a plotting, hardened 
knave, wholly regardless of everything but his own ends, 
and the means to secure them. — Not so Macbeth. The 
superstitions of the age, the rude state of society, the local 
scenery and customs, all give a wildness and imaginary 
grandeur to his character. From the strangeness of the 
events that surround him, he is full of amazement and fear ; 



yo English Literature 

and stands in doubt between the world of reality and the 
world of fancy. He sees sights not shewn to mortal eye, 
and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and disorder 
within and without his mind ; his purposes recoil upon 
himself, are broken and disjointed ; he is the double thrall 
of his passions and his evil destiny. Richard is not a 
character either of imagination or pathos, but of pure self- 
will. There is no conflict of opposite feelings in his breast. 
The apparitions which he sees only haunt him in his sleep ; 
nor does he live like Macbeth in a waking dream. Macbeth 
has considerable energy and manliness of character ; but then 
he is " subject to all the skyey influences." He is sure of 
nothing but the present moment. Richard in the busy turbu- 
lence of his projects never loses his self-possession, and 
makes use of every circumstance that happens as an instru- 
ment of his long-reaching designs. In his last extremity 
we can only regard him as a wild beast taken in the toils : 
while we never entirely lose our concern for Macbeth; 
and he calls back all our sympathy by that fine close of 
thoughtful melancholy, 

" My way of life is fallen into the sear, 
The yellow leaf ; and that which should accompany old age, 
As honour, troops of friends, I must not look to have; 
But in their stead, curses not loud but deep. 
Mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart 
Would fain deny, and dare not." 

We can conceive a common actor to play Richard tolera- 
bly well ; we can conceive no one to play Macbeth properly, 
or to look like a man that had encountered the Weird 
Sisters. All the actors that we have ever seen, appear 
as if they had encountered them on the boards of Covent- 
garden or Drury-lane, but not on the heath at Fores, and 
as if they did not believe what they had seen. The Witches 
of Macbeth indeed are ridiculous on the modern stage, 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 71 

and we doubt if the Furies of ^schylus would be more 
respected. The progress of manners and knowledge has 
an influence on the stage, and will in time perhaps destroy 
both tragedy and comedy. Filch's picking pockets in the 
Beggar's Opera is not so good a jest as it used to be : by 
the force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo's murders 
and the ghosts in Shakspeare will become obsolete. At last, 
there will be nothing left, good nor bad, to be desired or 
dreaded, on the theatre or in real Hfe. — A question has 
been started with respect to the originality of Shakspeare's 
witches, w^hich has been well answered by Mr. Lamb in his 
notes to the " Specimens of Early Dramatic Poetry." 

" Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms 
in Macbeth, and the incantations in this play, (The Witch of 
Middleton) which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence 
will not detract much from the originality of Shakspeare. His 
Witches are distinguished from the Witches of Middleton by essen- 
tial differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman 
plotting some dire mischief might resort for occasional consultation. 
Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. 
From the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is 
spell-bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break 
the fascination. These Witches can hurt the body ; those have 
power over the soul. — Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low 
buffoon : the hags of Shakspeare have neither child of their own, 
nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul 
anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor 
whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without 
human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. They 
come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This 
is all we know of them. — Except Hecate, they have no names, which 
heightens their mysteriousness. The names, and some of the prop- 
erties which Middleton has given to his hags, excite smiles. The 
Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist 
with mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are 
fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the 
mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o'er 
life." 



'J2 English Literature 

Iago 

The character of Iago is one of the supererogations of 
Shakspeare's genius. Some persons, more nice than wise, 
have thought this whole character unnatural, because his 
villainy is without a sufficient motive. Shakspeare, who was 
as good a philosopher as he was a poet, thought otherwise. 
He knew that the love of power, which is another name 
for the love of mischief-, is natural to man. He would 
know this as well or better than if it had been demonstrated 
to him by a logical diagram, merely from seeing children 
paddle in the dirt or kill flies for sport. Iago in fact 
belongs to a class of character, common to Shakspeare and 
at the same time peculiar to him ; whose heads are as acute 
and active as their hearts are hard and callous. Iago is to 
be sure an extreme instance of the kind ; that is to say, of dis- 
eased intellectual activity, with the most perfect indifference 
to moral good or evil, or rather with a decided preference of 
the latter, because it falls more readily in with his favourite 
propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to 
his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own 
fate as to that of others ; he runs all risks for a trifling 
and doubtful advantage ; and is himself the dupe and victim 
of his ruling passion — an insatiable craving after action 
of the most diflicult and dangerous kind. " Our ancient " 
is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more 
point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis ; who thinks 
a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing 
than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a 
microscope ; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise 
for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent 
ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success 
of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted 
on others. He is an amateur of tragedy in real life; and 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 73 

instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters, 
or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more 
desperate course of getting up his plot at home, casts the 
principal parts among his nearest friends and connections, 
and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves 
and unabated resolution. We will just give an illustration 
or two. 

One of his most characteristic speeches is that immedi- 
ately after the marriage of Othello. 

" Roderigo. What a full fortune does the thick lips owe, 
If he can carry her thus ! 

lago. Call up her father : 
Rouse him (Othello) make after him, poison his delight, 
Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen. 
And tho' he in a fertile climate dwell, 
Plague him with flies: tho' that his joy be joy, 
Yet throw such changes of vexation on it. 
As it may lose some colour." 

In the next passage, his imagination runs riot in the 
mischief he is plotting, and breaks out into the wildness 
and impetuosity of real enthusiasm. 

''Roderigo. Here is her father's house: I'll call aloud. 

lago. Do, with like timourous accent and dire yell 
As when, by night and negligence, the fire 
Is spied in populous cities." 



One of his most favourite topics, on which he is rich 
indeed, and in descanting on which his spleen serves him 
for a Muse, is the disproportionate match between Des- 
demona and the Moor. This is a clue to the character of 
the lady which he is by no means ready to part with. It 
is brought forward in the first scene, and he recurs to it, 
when in answer to his insinuations against Desdemona, 
Roderigo says, 



74 English Literature 

" I cannot believe that in her — she's full of most blest conditions. 
lago. Bless'd fig's end. The wine she drinks is made of grapes. 
If she had been blest, she would never have married the Moor." 

And again with still more spirit and fatal efifect afterwards, 
when he turns this very suggestion arising in Othello's own 
breast to her prejudice. 

" Othello. And yet how nature erring from itself — 

lago. Ay, there's the point ; — as to be bold with you, 
Not to affect many proposed matches 
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree," etc. 

This is probing to the quick. lago here turns the char- 
acter of poor Desdemona, as it were, inside out. It is cer- 
tain that nothing but the genius of Shakspeare could have 
preserved the entire interest and delicacy of the part, and 
have even drawn an additional elegance and dignity from 
the peculiar circumstances in which she is placed. — The 
habitual licentiousness of lago's conversation is not to be 
traced to the pleasure he takes in gross or lascivious images, 
but to his desire of finding out the worst side of everything, 
and of proving himself an over-match for appearances. He 
has none of '' the milk of human kindness " in his com- 
position. His imagination rejects everything that has not 
a strong infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients; his 
mind digests only poisons. Virtue or goodness or whatever 
has the least '' relish of salvation in it," is, to his depraved 
appetite, sickly and insipid: and he even resents the good 
opinion entertained of his own integrity, as if it were an 
affront cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his char- 
acter. Thus at the meeting between Othello and Des- 
demona, he exclaims — " Oh, you are well tuned now : but 
I'll set down the pegs that make this music, as honest as 
I am" — his character of bonhommie not sitting at all easy 
upon him. In the scenes, where he tries to work Othello 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 75 

to his purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, 
dark, and deHberate. We believe nothing ever came up 
to the profound dissimulation and dextrous artifice of the 
well-known dialogue in the third act, where he first enters 
upon the execution of his design. 

" lago. My noble lord. 

Othello. What dost thou say, lago? 

lago. Did Michael Cassio, 
When you woo'd my lady, know of your love? 

Othello. He did from first to last. 
Why dost thou ask? 

lago. But for a satisfaction of my thought, 
No further harm. 

Othello. Why of thy thought, lago? 

lago. I did not think he had been acquainted with it. 

Othello. O yes, and went between us very oft — 

lago. Indeed ! 

Othello. Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught of that? 
Is he not honest? 

lago. Honest, my lord? 
^ Othello. Honest? Ay, honest. 

lago. My lord, for aught I know. 

Othello. What do'st thou think? 

lago. Think, my lord ! 

Othello. Think, my lord! Alas, thou echo'st me, 
As if there was some monster in thy thought 
Too hideous to be shewn." — 

The stops and breaks, the deep workings of treachery 
under the mask of love and honesty, the anxious watchful- 
ness, the cool earnestness, and if we may so say, the passion 
of hypocrisy, marked in every line, receive their last finish- 
ing in that inconceivable burst of pretended indignation at 
Othello's doubts of his sincerity. 

" O grace ! O Heaven forgive me ! 
Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? 
God be wi' you ; take mine office. O wretched fool. 
That lov'st to make thine honesty a vice ! 
Oh monstrous world ! Take note, take note, O world ! 
To be direct and honest, is not safe. 



76 English Literature 

I thank you for this profit, and from hence 

I'll love no friend, since love breeds such offence. 



If lago is detestable enough when he has business on his 
hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when 
he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness 
of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into a 
swoon, is perfectly diabolical. 

"lago. How is it, General? Have you not hurt your head? 
Othello. Do'st thou mock me? 
lago. I mock you not, by Heaven," etc. 

The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, even as a 
foil to the virtue and generosity of the other characters 
in the play, but for its indefatigable industry and inex- 
haustible resources, which divert the attention of the spec- 
tator (as well as his own) from the end he has in view 
to the means by which it must be accomplished. — Edmund 
the Bastard in Lear is something of the same character, 
placed in less prominent circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar 
caricature of it. 

Hamlet 

This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read of in our 
youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in 
our after-years; he who made that famous soliloquy on 
life, who gave the advice to the players, who thought " this 
goodly frame, the earth, a steril promontory, and this brave 
o'er-hanging firmament, the air, this majestical roof fretted 
with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of va- ■ 
pours ; " whom '' man delighted not, nor woman neither ; " 
he who talked with the grave-diggers, and moralised on 
Yorick's skull; the school-fellow of Rosencrans and 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays "jy 

Guildenstern at Wittenberg ; the friend of Horatio ; the 
lover of OpheHa; he that was mad and sent to England; 
the slow avenger of his father's death ; who lived at the 
court of Horwendillus five hundred years before we were 
born, but all whose thoughts we seem to know as well as 
we do our own, because we have read them in Shakspeare. 

Hamlet is a name ; his speeches and sayings but the idle 
coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are they not real? 
They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is 
in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This play 
has a prophetic truth, which is above that of history. Who- 
ever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his 
own mishaps or those of others ; whoever has borne about 
with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought him- 
self " too much i' th' sun ; " whoever has seen the golden 
lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own 
breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull 
blank with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has 
known " the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, 
or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes ; " 
he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling 
to his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted 
and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange 
things ; who cannot be well at ease, while he sees evil 
hovering near him Hke a spectre ; whose powers of action 
have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe 
seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of 
soul makes him careless of consequences, and who goes to 
a play as his best resource to shove off, to a second remove, 
the evils of life by a mock representation of them — this is 
■the true Hamlet. 

We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly 
know how to criticise it any more than we should know 
how- to describe our own faces. But we must make such 



78 English Literature 

observations as we can. It is the one of Shakspeare's plays 
that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds most 
in striking reflections on human Hfe, and because the dis- 
tresses of -Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, 
to the general account of humanity. Whatever happens 
to him we apply to ourselves, because he applies it so 
himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great 
moraliser; and what makes him worth attending to is, that 
he moralises on his own feelings and experience. He is not 
a common-place pedant. If Lear is distinguished by the 
greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable 
for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied developement 
of character. Shakspeare had more magnanimity than any 
other poet, and he has shewn more of it in this play than 
in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest : 
everything is left for time and circumstances to unfold. 
The attention is excited without effort, the incidents suc- 
ceed each other as matters of course, the characters think 
and speak and act just as they might do, if left entirely 
to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at 
a point. The observations are suggested by the passing 
scene — the gusts of passion come and go like sounds of 
music borne on the wind. The whole play is an exact 
transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place 
at the court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed 
upon, before the modern refinements in morals and manners 
were heard of. It would have been interesting enough to 
have been admitted as a by-stander in such a scene, at such 
a time, to have heard and witnessed something of what 
was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We 
have not only '' the outward pageants and the signs of 
grief ; " but '' we have that within which passes shew." 
We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions 
living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 79 

fine versions and paraphrases of nature; but Shakspeare, 
together with his own comments, gives us the original text, 
that we may judge for ourselves. This is a very great 
advantage. 

The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is 
not a character marked by strength of will or even of 
passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Ham- 
let is as little of the hero as a man can well be: but he 
is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm 
and quick sensibility — the sport of circumstances, ques- 
tioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, 
and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the 
strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of delib- 
erate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the 
spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as 
in the scene where he kills Polonius, and again, where 
he alters the letters which Rosencrans and Guildenstern are 
talking with them to England, purporting his death. At 
other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains 
puzzled, undecided, and sceptical, daUies with his purposes, 
till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to 
relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again. For this 
reason he refuses to kill the King when he is at his prayers, 
and by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an 
excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge 
to a more fatal opportunity, when he shall be engaged 
in some act '' that has no rehsh of salvation in it." 



" He kneels and prays, 
And now I'll do't, and so he goes to heaven, 
And so am I reveng'd : that would be scann'd. 
He kill'd my father, and for that, 
I, his sole son, send him to heaven. 
Why this is reward, not revenge. 
Up sword and know thou a more horrid time, 
When he is drunk, asleep, or in a rage." 



8o English Literature 

He is the prince of philosophical speculators : and because 
he cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the most 
refined idea his wish can form, he declines it altogether. 
So he scruples to trust the suggestions of the ghost, con- 
trives the scene of the play to have surer proof of his 
uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with this confirmation 
of his suspicions, and the success of his experiment, instead 
of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible of his own weakness, 
taxes himself with it, and tries to reason himself out of it. 



" How all occasions do inform against me, 
And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, 
If his chief good and market of his time 
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more. 
Sure he that made us with such large discourse, 

■ Looking before and after, gave us not 
That capability and god-Hke reason 
To rust in us unus'd. Now whether it be 
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
Of thinking too precisely on th' event, — 
A thought which quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom, 
And ever three parts coward; — I do not know 
Why yet I live to say, this thing's to do ; 
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means 
To do it. Examples gross as earth exhort me : 
Witness this army of such mass and charge, 
Led by a delicate and tender prince, 
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd. 
Makes mouths at the invisible event. 
Exposing what is mortal and unsure 
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, 
Even for an egg-shell. 'Tis not to be great 
Never to stir without great argument ; 
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, 
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then, 
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, 
Excitements of my reason and my blood, 
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see 
The imminent death of twenty thousand men. 
That for a fantasy and trick of fame, 
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot 
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 8i 

Which is not tomb enough and continent 
To hide the slain? — O, from this time forth, 
My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth." 

Still he does nothing; and this very speculation on his 
own infirmity only affords him another occasion for in- 
dulging it. It is not from any want of attachment to his 
father or of abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet is thus 
dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagina- 
tion in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining 
on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into imme- 
diate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act : 
and any vague pretext that flatters this propensity instantly 
diverts him from his previous purposes. 

The moral perfection of this character has been called 
in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. 
It is more interesting than according to rules ; amiable, 
though not faultless. . The ethical delineations of " that noble 
and Hberal casuist" (as Shakspeare has been well called) 
do not exhibit the drab-coloured quakerism of morality. 
His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of 
Man, or from The Academy of Compliments ! We confess 
we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those 
who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. 
The neglect of punctiHous exactness in his behaviour either 
partakes of the " Hcence of the time," or else belongs to 
the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, 
which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own 
purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amena- 
ble only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too 
much taken up with the airy world of contemplation to lay 
as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences 
of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged 
and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia 
is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed 



82 English Literature 

severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter 
regrets, of affection suspended, not obHterated, by the dis- 
tractions of the scene around him ! Amidst the natural 
and preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be 
excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. 
When '' his father's spirit was in arms," it was not a time 
for the son to make love in. He could neither marry 
Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of 
his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think 
of. It would have taken him years to have come to a direct 
explanation on the point. In the harassed state of his mind, 
he could not have done much otherwise than he did. His 
conduct does not contradict what he says when he sees her 
funeral, 

" I loved Ophelia : forty thousand brothers 
Could not with all their quantity of love 
Make up my sum." 

Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the 
Queen's apostrophe to Ophelia on throwing the flowers into 
the grave. 

" Sweets to the sweet, farewell. 

I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife: 
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, 
And not have strew' d thy grave." 

Shakspeare was thoroughly a master of the mixed mo- 
tives of human character, and he here shews us the Queen, 
who was so criminal in some respects, not without sensi- 
bility and affection in other relations of life. — Ophelia is 
a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt 
upon. Oh rose of May, oh flower too soon faded ! Her 
love, her madness, her death, are described with the truest 
touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 83 

nobody but Shakspeare could have drawn in the way that 
he has done, and to the conception of which there is not 
even the smallest approach, except in some of the old 
romantic ballads.* Her brother, Laertes, is a character we 
do not like so well : he is too hot and choleric, and some- 
what rhodomontade. Polonius is a perfect character in 
its kind; nor is there any foundation for the objections 
which have been made to the consistency of this part. It 
is said that he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. 
There is no inconsistency in that. Again, that he talks 
wisely at one time and foolishly at another ; that his advice 
to Laertes is very excellent, and his advice to the King 
and Queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness very ridicu- 
lous. But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it ; 
he gives the other as a mere courtier, a busy-body, and is 
accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent. In short, 
Shakspeare has been accused of inconsistency in this and 
other characters, only because he has kept up the distinction 
which there is in nature, between the understandings and 
the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their 
ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not 
a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in his 
actions or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety 
of intention. 

We do not like to see our author's plays acted, and least 
of all, Hamlet. There is no play that suffers so much in 
being transferred to the stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly 



* In the account of her death, a friend has pointed out an instance 
of the poet's exact observation of nature : — 

" There is a willow growing o'er a brook, 
That shews its hoary leaves i' th' glassy stream." 
The inside of the leaves of the willow, next the water, is of a 
whitish colour, and the reflection would therefore be " hoary." 



84 English Literature 

capable of being acted. Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails in 
this character from a want of ease and variety. The char- 
acter of Hamlet is made up of undulating lines; it has 
the yielding flexibility of " a wave o' th' sea." Mr. Kemble 
plays it like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy 
of purpose, in one undeviating straight line, which is as 
remote from the natural grace and refined susceptibility of 
the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts which 
Mr. Kean introduces into the part. Mr. Kean's Hamlet 
is as much too splenetic and rash as Mr. Kemble's is too 
deliberate and formal. His manner is too strong and 
pointed. He throws a severity, approaching to virulence, 
into the common observations and answers. There is noth- 
ing of this in Hamlet. He is, as it were, wrapped up 
in his reflections, and only thinks aloud. There should 
therefore be no attempt to impress what he says upon others 
by a studied exaggeration of emphasis or manner ; no talk- 
ing at his hearers. There should be as much of the gentle- 
man and scholar as possible infused into the part, and 
as Httle of the actor. A pensive air of sadness should sit 
reluctantly upon his brow, but no appearance of fixed and 
sullen gloom. He is full of weakness and melancholy, but 
there is no harshness in his nature. He is the most amia- 
ble of misanthropes. 

Romeo and Juliet 

Romeo and Juliet is the only tragedy which Shakspeare 
has written entirely on a love-story. It is supposed to have 
been his first play, and it deserves to stand in that proud 
rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in every line, 
in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the bitterness 
of despair. It has been said of Romeo and Juliet by a 
great critic, that " whatever is most intoxicating in the 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 85 

odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the 
nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, 
is to be found in this poem." The description is true ; and 
yet it does not answer to our idea of the play. For if 
it has the sweetness of the rose, it has its freshness too ; 
if it has the languor of the nightingale's song, it has also 
its giddy transport; if it has the softness of a southern 
spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is nothing of 
a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in 
love, but they are not love-sick. Everything speaks the 
very soul of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the 
passions : the heart beats, the blood circulates and mantles 
throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange 
of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand from poems 
and plays, — made up of beauties of the most shadowy 
kind, of " fancies wan that hang the pensive head," of 
evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy 
that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce 
supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an 
artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature ! It is 
' the reverse of all this. It is Shakspeare all over, and 
Shakspeare when he was young. 

Midsummer Night's Dream 

Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of the 
fairy band. He is the Ariel of the Midsummer Night's 
Dream ; and yet as unhke as can be to the Ariel in the 
Tempest. No other poet could have made two such dif- 
ferent characters out of the same fanciful materials and 
situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is 
touched with the sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck 
is a mad-cap sprite, full of w^antonness and mischief, who 
laughs at those whom he misleads — " Lord, what fools 



86 English Literature 

these mortals be ! " Ariel cleaves the air, and executes 
his mission with the zeal of a winged messenger ; Puck is 
borne along on his fairy errand like the light and glittering 
gossamer before the breeze. He is, indeed, a most Epi- 
curean little gentleman, dealing in quaint devices, and faring 
in dainty delights. Prospero and his world of spirits are 
a set of moralists : but with Oberon and his fairies we are 
launched at once into the empire of the butterflies. How 
beautifully is this race of beings contrasted with the men 
and women actors in the scene, by a single epithet which 
Titania gives to the latter, '' the human mortals " ! It is 
astonishing that Shakspeare should be considered, not only 
by foreigners, but by many of our own critics, as a gloomy 
and heavy writer, who painted nothing but " gorgons and 
hydras, and chimeras dire." His subtlety exceeds that 
of all other dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated 
person of the present day said that he regarded him rather 
as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sportive 
gaiety are infinite. In the Midsummer Night's Dream 
alone, we should imagine, there is more sweetness and 
beauty of description than in the whole range of French 
poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will 
produce out of that single play ten passages, to which we 
do not think any ten passages in the works of the French 
poets can be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery. 
Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, 
or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes 
with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck's account of 
himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhorta- 
tion to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite. 
Bottom ; or Hippolita's description of a chace, or Theseus's 
answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the 
others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this 
play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight; the de- 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 87 

scriptions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from 
beds of flowers. . . . 

The Midsummer Night's Dream, when acted, is con- 
verted from a deHghtful fiction into a dull pantomime. 
All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. 
The spectacle was grand ; but the spirit was evaporated, the 
genius was fled. — Poetry and the stage do not agree well 
together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance 
fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The ideal can have 
no place upon the stage, which is a picture without per- 
spective : everything there is in the fore-ground. That 
which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, 
immediately becomes an unmanageable reality. Where all 
is left to the imagination (as is the case in reading) every 
circumstance, near or remote, has an equal chance of being 
kept in mind, and tells accordingly to the mixed impression 
of all that has been suggested. But the imagination cannot 
sufficiently qualify the actual impressions of the senses. 
Any offence given to the eye is not to be got rid of by 
explanation. Thus Bottom's head in the play is a fantastic 
illusion, produced by magic spells : on the stage it is an 
ass's head, and nothing more; certainly a very strange 
costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be 
embodied any more than a simile can be painted ; and it 
is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. 
Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. 
Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper 
distance. When ghosts appear at mid-day, when appari- 
tions stalk along Cheapside, then may the Midsummer 
Night's Dream be represented without injury at Covent- 
garden or at Drury-lane. The boards of a theatre and the 
regions of fancy are not the same thing. - 



88 English Literature 

Falstaff 

If Shakspeare's fondness for the ludicrous sometimes 
led to faults in his tragedies (which was not often the 
case) he has made us amends by the character of Falstaff. 
This is perhaps the most substantial comic character that 
ever was invented. Sir John carries a most portly presence 
in the mind's eye; and in him, not to speak it profanely, 
" we behold the fulness of the spirit of wit and humour 
bodily." We are as well acquainted with his person as 
his mind, and his jokes come upon us with double force 
and relish from the quantity of flesh through which they 
make their way, as he shakes his fat sides with laughter, 
or '' lards the lean earth as he walks along." Other comic 
characters seem, if we approach and handle them, to resolve 
themselves into air, '' into thin air ; " but this is embodied 
and palpable to the grossest apprehension : it lies " three 
fingers deep upon the ribs," it plays about the lungs and 
the diaphragm with all the force of animal enjoyment. 
His body is like a good estate to his mind, from which he 
receives rents and revenues of profit and pleasure in kind, 
according to its extent, and the richness of the soil. Wit 
is often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sensation ; an 
effusion of spleen and petty spite at the comforts of others, 
from feeling none in itself. Falstaff's wit is an emanation 
of a fine constitution; an exuberance of good-humour and 
good-nature ; an overflowing of his love of laughter and 
good-fellowship ; a giving vent to his heart's ease, and over- 
contentment with himself and others. He would not be 
in character, if he were not so fat as he is ; for there is 
the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagina- 
tion and the pampered self-indulgence of his physical ap- 
petites. He manures and nourishes his mind w^ith jests, 
as he does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out 



The Characxers of Shakspeare's Plays 89 

his jokes, as he would a capon or a haunch of venison, 
where there is cut and come again; and pours out upon 
them the oil of gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and 
in the chambers of his brain " it snows of meat and drink." 
He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, and we 
live with him in a round of invitations to a rump and 
dozen. — Yet we are not to suppose that he was a mere 
sensualist. All this is as much in imagination as in reaUty. 
His sensuality does not engross and stupify his other facul- 
ties, but " ascends me into the brain, clears away all the 
dull, crude vapours that environ it, and makes it full of 
nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes." His imagination 
keeps up the ball after his senses have done with it. He 
seems to have even a greater enjoyment of the freedom 
from restraint, of good cheer, of his ease, of his vanity, 
in the ideal exaggerated description which he gives of 
them, than in fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse 
with allusions to eating and drinking, but we never see 
him at table. He carries his own larder about with him, 
and he is himself " a tun of man." His pulling out the 
bottle in the field of battle is a joke to shew his contempt 
for glory accompanied with danger, his systematic adher- 
ence to his Epicurean philosophy in the most trying cir- 
cumstances. Again, such is his deliberate exaggeration of 
his own vices, that it does not seem quite certain whether 
the account of his hostess's bill, found in his pocket, with 
such an out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack with 
only one halfpenny-worth of bread, was not put there by 
himself as a trick to humour the jest upon his favourite 
propensities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. He 
is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, 
etc. and yet we are not offended but delighted with him ; 
for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify 
himself. He openly assumes all these characters to shew 



90 English Literature 

the humourous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence 
of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither 
maUce nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor in 
himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more 
object to the character of Falstafif in a moral point of view 
than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian, 
who should represent him to the life, before one 
of the police offices. We only consider the number of 
pleasant lights in which he puts certain foibles (the more 
pleasant as they are opposed to the received rules and 
necessary restraints of society) and do not trouble ourselves 
about the consequences resulting from them, for no mis- 
chievous consequences do result. Sir John is old as well 
as fat, which gives a melancholy retrospective tinge to the 
character; and by the disparity between his inclinations and 
his capacity for enjoyment, 'makes it still more ludicrous 
and fantastical. 

The secret of Falstaff's wit is for the most part a mas- 
terly presence of mind, an absolute self-possession, which 
nothing can disturb. His repartees are involuntary sugges- 
tions of his self-love ; instinctive evasions of everything that 
threatens to interrupt the career of his triumphant jolHty and 
self-complacency. His very size floats him out of all his 
difficulties in a sea of rich conceits ; and he turns round on 
the pivot of his convenience, with every occasion and at 
a moment's warning. His natural repugnance to every 
unpleasant thought or circumstance, of itself makes light of 
objections, and provokes the most extravagant and licen- 
tious answers in his own justification. His indifference to 
truth puts no check upon his invention, and the more im- 
probable and unexpected his contrivances are, the more 
happily does he seem to be delivered of them, the anticipa- 
tion of their effect acting as a stimulus to the gaiety of 
his fancy. The success of one adventurous sally ^ives him 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 91 

spirits to undertake another : he deals always in round 
numbers, and his exaggerations and excuses are " open, 
palpable, monstrous as the father that begets them." His 
dissolute carelessness of what he says discovers itself in 
the first dialogue w^ith the Prince. 



" Falstaff. By the lord, thou say'st true, lad; and is not mine 
hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench? 

P. Henry. As the honey of Hibla, my old lad of the castle ; 
and is not a buff-jerkin a most sweet robe of durance? 

Falstaff. How now, how now, mad wag, what in thy quips and 
thy quiddities? what a plague have I to do with a buff-jerkin? 

P. Henry. Why, what a pox have I to do with mine hostess 
of the tavern? " 



In the same scene he afterwards affects melancholy, from 
pure satisfaction of hearty and professes reform, because 
it is the farthest thing in the world from his thoughts. He 
has no qualms of conscience, and therefore would as soon 
talk of them as of anything else when the humour takes 
him. 



" Falstaif. But Hal, I pr'ythee trouble me no more with vanity. 
I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good 
names were to be bought: an old lord of council rated me the 
other day in the street about you, sir; but I mark'd him not, and 
5"et he talked very wisely, and in the street too. 

P. Henry. Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the street, 
and no man regards it. 

Falstaff. O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able 
to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm unto me, Hal ; 
God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing, 
and now I am, if a man should speak truly, little better than one 
of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over, 
by the Lord ; an I do not, I am a villain. I'll be damned for never 
a king's son in Christendom. 

P. Henry. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow. Jack? 

Falstaff. Where thou wilt, lad, I'll make one; an I do not, call 
me villain, and baffle me. 



92 English Literature 

P. Henry. I see good amendment of life in thee, from praying 
to purse-taking. 

Falstaff. Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal. 'Tis no sin for a 
man to labour in his vocation." 

Of the other prominent passages, his account of his pre- 
tended resistance to the robbers, " who grew from four 
men in buckram into eleven " as the imagination of his 
own valour increased with his relating it, his getting off 
when the truth is discovered by pretending he knew the 
Prince, the scene in which in the person of the old king 
he lectures the prince and gives himself a good character, 
the soliloquy on honour, and description of his new-raised 
recruits, his meeting with the chief justice, his abuse of the 
Prince and Poins, who overhear him, to Doll Tearsheet, 
his reconciliation with Mrs. Quickly who has arrested him 
for an old debt, and whom he persuades to pawn her plate 
to lend him ten pounds more, and the scenes with Shallow 
and Silence, are all inimitable. Of all of them, the scene 
in which Falstaff plays the part, first, of the King, and 
then of Prince Henry, is the one that has been the most 
often quoted. We must quote it once more in Illustration 
of our remarks. 



"Falstaff. Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest 
thy time, but also how thou art accompanied : for though the 
camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, 
the more it is wasted, the sooner it weafs. That thou art my son, 
I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion ; but 
chiefly, a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of 
thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. \i then thou be son to me, 

here lies the point ; Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed 

at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, and eat 
blackberries? A question not to be ask'd. Shall the son of Eng- 
land prove a thief, and take purses? a question to be ask'd. 
There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it 
is known to many in our land by the name of pitch : this pitch, 
as ancient writers do report, doth defile ; so doth the company thou 
keepest : for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 93 

tears ; not in pleasure, but in passion ; not in words only, but in 
woes also : — and yet there is a virtuous man, whom I have often 
noted in thy company, but I know not his name. 

P. Henry. What manner of man, an it like your majesty? 

Falstaff. A goodly portly man, i'faith, and a corpulent; of a 
cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as 
I think, his age some fifty, or, by'r-lady, inclining to threescore ; 
and now I do remember me, his name is Falstaff: if that man 
should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue 
in his looks. If then the fruit may be known by the tree, as the 
tree by the fruit, then peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in 
that Falstaff : him keep with, the rest banish. And tell me now, 
thou naughty varlet, tell me, where hast thou been this month? 

P. Henry. Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me, 
and I'll play my father. 

Falstaff. Depose me? if thou dost it half so gravely, so majes- 
tically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a 
rabbit-sucker, or a poulterer's hare. 

P. Henry. Well, here I am set. 

Falstaff. And here I stand : — judge, my masters. 

P. Henry. Now, Harry, whence come you? 

Falstaff. My noble lord, from Eastcheap. 
^P. Henry. The complaints I hear of thee are grievous. 

Falstaff. S'blood, my lord, they are false : — nay, I'll tickle ye 
for a young prince, i'faith. 

P. Henry. Swearest thou, ungracious boy? henceforth ne'er look 
on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace : there is a 
devil haunts thee, in the likeness of a fat old man; a tun of man 
is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of 
humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swoln parcel of 
dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuft cloak-bag of guts, 
that roasted Manning-tree ox with the pudding in his belly, that 
reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in 
years? wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein 
neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein cunning, 
but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villainy? wherein villainous, 
but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing? 

Falstaff. I would, your grace would take me with you ; whom 
means your grace? 

P. Henry. That villainous, abominable mis-leader of youth, 
Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan. 

Falstaff. My lord, the man I know. 

P. Henry. I know thou dost. 

Falstaff. But to say, I know more harm in him than in myself, 
were to say more than I know. That he is old (the more the pity) 



94 English Literature 

his white hairs do witness it: but that he is (saving your reverence) 
a whore-master, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, 
God help the wicked ! if to be old and merry be a sin, then many 
an old host that I know is damned : if to be fat be to be hated, 
then Pharoah's lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord ; 
banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins : but for sweet Jack 
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, 
and therefore more valiant, being as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish 
not him thy Harry's company ; banish plump Jack, and banish all 
the world. 
P. Henry. I do, I will. 

[Knocking ; and Hostess and Bardolph go out. 

Re-enter Bardolph, running. 

Bardolph. O, my lord, my lord; the sheriff, with a most mon- 
strous watch, is at the door. 

Falstaff. Out, you rogue ! play out the play : I have much to say 
in the behalf of that Falstaff." 

One of the most characteristic descriptions of Sir John 
is that which Mrs. Quickly gives of him when he asks 
her " What is the gross sum that I owe thee ? " 

"Hostess. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself, and the 
money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, 
sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal 
fire on Wednesday in Whitsun-week, when the Prince broke thy. 
head for likening his father to a singing man of Windsor ; thou 
didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry 
me, and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did 
not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, and call me 
gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us, 
she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat 
some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound? And 
didst thou not, when she was gone down stairs, desire me to be 
no more so familiarity with such poor people ; saying, that ere 
long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me, 
and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy 
book-oath; deny it, if thou canst." 

This scene is to us the most convincing proof of Fal- 
staff's power of gaining over the good will of those he 
was familiar with, except indeed Bardolph's somewhat pro- 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 95 

fane exclamation on hearing the account of his death, 
" Would I were with him, wheresoe'er he is, whether in 
heaven or hell." 

One of the topics of exulting superiority over others 
most common in Sir John's mouth is his corpulence and 
the exterior marks of good living which he carries about 
him, thus " turning his vices into commodity.'' He ac- 
counts for the friendship between the Prince and Poins, 
from " their legs being both of a bigness ; " and compares 
Justice Shallow to " a man made after supper of a cheese- 
paring." There cannot be a more striking gradation of 
character than that beween Falstaff and Shallow, and Shal- 
low and Silence. It seems difficult at first to fall lower than 
the squire; but this fool, great as he is, finds an admirer 
and humble foil in his cousin Silence. Vain of his acquaint- 
ance with Sir John, who makes a butt of him, he exclaims, 
'*' Would, cousin Silence, that thou had'st seen that which 
this knight and I have seen ! " — " Aye, Master Shallow, we 
have heard the chimes at midnight," says Sir John. To 
Falstaff 's observation, '' I did not think Master Silence had 
been a man of this mettle," Silence answers, " Who, I ? 
I have been merry twice and once ere now." What an idea 
is here conveyed of a prodigality of living? What good 
husbandry and economical self-denial in his pleasures? 
What a stock of lively recollections? It is curious that 
Shakspeare has ridiculed in Justice Shallow, who was " in 
some authority under the king," that disposition to unmean- 
ing tautology which is the regal infirmity of later times, and 
which, it may be supposed, he acquired from talking to 
his cousin Silence, and receiving no answers. 



"Falstaff. You have here a goodly dwelling, and a rich. 

Shallow. Barren, barren, barren ; beggars all beggars all, Sir 
John : marry, good air. Spread Davy, spread Davy. Well said, 
Davy. 



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Falstaif. This Davy serves you for good uses. 

Shallow. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet. By 
the mass, I have drunk too much sack at supper, A good varlet. 
Now sit down, now sit down. Come, cousin." 

The true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge 
of the stuff we are made of, the practical wisdom with 
the seeming fooleries in the whole of the garden-scene at 
Shallow's country-seat, and just before in the exquisite dia- 
logue between him and Silence on the death of old Double, 
have no parallel anywhere else. In one point of view, they 
are laughable in the extreme ; in another they are equally 
affecting, if it is affecting to shew zvhat a little thing is 
human life, what a poor forked creature man is ! 

Twelfth Night ; or, What You Will 

This is justly considered as one of the most delightful 
of Shakspeare's comedies. It is full of sweetness and pleas- 
antry. It is perhaps too good-natured for comedy. It has 
little satire, and no spleen. It aims at the ludicrous rather 
than the ridiculous. It makes us laugh at the follies of 
mankind, not despise them, and still less bear any ill-will 
towards them. Shakspeare's comic genius resembles the 
bee rather in its power of extracting sweets from weeds 
or poisons, than in leaving a sting behind it. He gives the 
most amusing exaggeration of the prevailing foibles of his 
characters, but in a way that they themselves, instead of 
being offended at, would almost join in to humour; he 
rather contrives opportunities for them to shew themselves 
off in the happiest lights, than renders them contemptible 
in the perverse construction of the wit or malice of others. — 
There is a certain stage of society in which people become 
conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, affect to 
disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 97 

are not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, 
the object of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, 
and to make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of 
vanity, by marking the contrast between the real and the 
affected character as severely as possible, and denying to 
those, who would impose on us for what they are not, even 
the merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial 
life, of wit and satire, such as we see it in Congreve, 
Wycherley, Vanburgh, etc. To this succeeds a state of 
society from which the same sort of affectation and pretence 
are banished by a greater knowledge of the world or by 
their successful exposure on the stage ; and which by neu- 
tralising the materials of comic character, both natural and 
artificial, leaves no comedy at all — but the sentimental. 
Such is our modern comedy. There is a period in the 
progress of manners anterior to both these, in which the 
foibles and follies of individuals are of nature's planting, not 
the growth of art or study; in which they are therefore 
unconscious of them themselves, or care not who knows 
them, if they can but have their whim out; and in which, 
as there is no attempt at imposition, the spectators rather 
receive pleasure from humouring the inclinations of the 
persons they laugh at, than wish to give them pain by 
exposing their absurdity. This may be called the comedy 
of nature, and it is the comedy which we generally find 
in Shakspeare. — Whether the analysis here given be just 
or not, the spirit of his comedies is evidently quite distinct 
from that of the authors above mentioned, as it is in its 
essence the same with that of Cervantes, and also very 
frequently of Moliere, though he was more systematic in 
his extravagance than Shakspeare. Shakspeare's comedy 
is of a pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to 
the soil, and shoots out with native, happy, unchecked 
luxuriance. Absurdity has every encouragement afforded 



98 English Literature 

it ; and nonsense has room to flourish in. Nothing is 
stunted by the churHsh, icy hand of indifference or severity. 
The poet runs riot in a conceit, and idoHses a quibble. His 
whole object is to turn the meanest or rudest objects to 
a pleasurable account. The relish which he has of a pun, 
or of the quaint humour of a low character, does not inter- 
fere with the delight with which he describes a beautiful 
image, or the most refined love. The Clown's forced jests 
do not spoil the sweetness of the character of Viola ; the 
same house is big enough to hold Malvolio, the Countess, 
Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew Ague-cheek. For in- 
stance, nothing can fall much lower than this last character 
in intellect or morals : yet how are his weaknesses nursed 
and dandled by Sir Toby into something '' high fantastical," 
when on Sir Andrew's commendation of himself for 
dancing and fencing, Sir Toby answers — " Wherefore are 
these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain 
before them? Are they like to take dust like mistress 
Moll's picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a 
galHard, and come home in a coranto? My very walk 
should be a jig! I would not so much as make water but 
in a cinque-pace. What dost thou mean? Is this a world 
to hide virtues in? I did think by the excellent constitu- 
tion of thy leg, it was framed under the star of a galliard ! " 
— How Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown afterwards 
chirp over their cups, how they " rouse the night-owl in 
a catch, able to draw three souls out of one weaver ! " 
What can be better than Sir Toby's unanswerable answer 
to Malvolio, " Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, 
there shall be no more cakes and ale?" — In a word, the 
best turn is given to everything, instead of the worst. 
There is a constant infusion of the romantic and enthusi- 
astic, in proportion as the characters are natural and sin- 
cere : whereas, in the more artificial style of comedy, every- 



The Characters of Shakspeare's Plays 99 

thing gives way to ridicule and indifference, there being 
nothing left but affectation on one side, and incredulity on 
the other. — Much as we like Shakspeare's comedies, we 
cannot agree with Dr. Johnson that they are better than 
his tragedies; nor do we like them half so well. If his 
inclination to comedy sometimes led him to trifle with the 
seriousness of tragedy, the poetical and impassioned pas- 
sages are the best parts of his com.edies. The great and 
secret charm of Twelfth Night is the character of Viola. 
Much as we Hke catches and cakes and ale, there is some- 
thing that we like better. We have a friendship for Sir 
Toby ; we patronise Sir Andrew ; we have an understanding 
with the Clown, a sneaking kindness for Maria and her 
rogueries; we feel a regard for MalvoHo, and sympathise 
with his gravity, his smiles, his cross garters, his yellow 
stockings, and imprisonment in the stocks. But there is 
something that excites in us a stronger feeling than all 
this — it is Viola's confession of her love. 

"Duke. What's her history? 

Viola. A blank, my lord, she never told her love: 
She let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud, 
Feed on her damask cheek : she pin'd in thought, 
And with a green and yellow melancholy, 
She sat like Patience on a monument, 
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? 
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed, 
Our shews are more than will ; for still we prove 
Much in our vows, but little in our love. 

Duke. But died thy sister of her love, my boy? 

Viola. I am all the daughters of my father's house, 
And all the brothers too ; — and yet I know not." — 

Shakspeare alone could describe the effect of his own 
poetry. 

" Oh, it came o'er the ear like the sweet south 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odour." 



loo English Literature 

What we so much admire here is not the image of Pa- 
tience on a monument, which has been generally quoted, 
but the Hues before and after it. " They give a very echo 
to the seat where love is throned." How long ago it is since 
we first learnt to repeat them ; and still, still they vibrate on 
the heart, like the sounds which the passing wind draws 
from the trembling strings of a harp left on some desert 
shore! There are other passages of not less impassioned 
sweetness. Such is OHvia's address to Sebastian, whom 
she supposes to have already deceived her in a promise of 
marriage. 

" Blame not this haste of mine : if you mean well, 
Now go with me and with this holy man 
Into the chantry by : there before him, 
And underneath that consecrated roof, 
Plight me the full assurance of your faith, 
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul 
May live at peace." 



1 



V 

MILTON 

Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious en- 
thusiasm, and an indifference to personal reputation; he 
had none of the bigotry of his age, and his political preju- 
dices were not very strong. In these respects, as well as 
in every other, he formed a direct contrast to Milton. Mil- 
ton's works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses ; a 
hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on 
the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect 
commonwealth ; and he seized the pen with a hand just 
warm from the touch of the ark of faith. His religious 
zeal infused its character into his imagination ; so that he 
devotes himself with the same sense of duty to the cultiva- 
tion of his genius, as he did to the exercise of virtue, or 
the good of his country. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, 
and the prophet, vied with each other in his breast. His 
mind appears to have held equal communion with the in- 
spired writers, and with the bards and sages of ancient 
Greece and Rome ; — 

" Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides, 
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old." 

He had a high standard, with which he was always com- 
paring himself, nothing short of which could satisfy his 
jealous ambition. He thought of nobler forms and nobler 
things than those he found about him. He lived apart, in 
the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully excluding from 

lOI 



I02 English Literature 

his mind whatever might distract its purposes, or alloy its 
purity, or damp its zeal. '' With darkness and with dangers 
compassed round," he had the mighty models of antiquity 
always present to his thoughts, and determined to raise a 
monument of equal height and glory, " piling up every stone 
of lustre from the brook," for the delight and wonder of 
posterity. He had girded himself up, and as it were, sancti- 
fied his genius to this service from his youth. '' For after," 
he says, " I had from my first years, by the ceaseless dili- 
gence and care of my father, been exercised to the tongues, 
and some sciences as my age could suffer, by sundry mas- 
ters and teachers, it was found that whether aught was 
imposed upon me by them, or betaken to of my own choice, 
the style by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live; 
but much latelier, in the private academies of Italy, per- 
ceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed 
at under twenty or thereabout, met with acceptance above 
what was looked for^ I began thus far to assent both to 
them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less 
to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, 
that by labour and intense study (which I take to be my 
portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of 
nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to 
after-times as they should not willingly let it die. The 
accomplishment of these intentions which have lived within 
me ever since I could conceive myself anything worth to 
my country, lies not but in a power above man's to promise ; 
but that none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, 
and with more unwearied spirit that none shall, that I dare 
almost aver of myself, as far as life and free leisure will 
extend. Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any 
knowing reader, that for some few years yet, I may go on 
trust with him toward the payment of what I am now 
indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat 



Milton 103 

of youth or the vapours of wine ; Hke that which flows 
at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the 
trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by 
the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, 
but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit, who can enrich 
with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his 
Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and 
purify the lips of whom he pleases : to this must be added 
industrious and select reading, steady observation, and in- 
sight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. Al- 
though it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much 
beforehand ; but that I trust hereby to make it manifest 
v/ith what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pur- 
suit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and 
pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident 
thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse 
disputes, from beholding the bright countenance of truth 
in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." 
So that of Spenser : 

" The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought, 
And is with child of glorious great intent, 
Can never rest until it forth hath brought 
The eternal brood of glory excellent." 

Milton, therefore, did not w^ite from casual impulse, but 
after a severe examination of his own strength, and with 
a resolution to leave nothing undone which it was in his 
power to do. He always labours, and almost always suc- 
ceeds. He strives hard to say the finest things in the 
world, and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies his 
subject to the utmost : he surrounds it with every possible 
association of beauty or grandeur, whether moral, intel- 
lectual, or physical. He refines on his descriptions of 
beauty ; loading sweets on sweets, till the sense aches at 



104 English Literature 

them ; and raises his images of terror to a gigantic elevation, 
that " makes Ossa Hke a wart." In Milton there is always 
an appearance of effort : in Shakspeare, scarcely any. 

Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and 
exhausted every source of imitation, sacred or profane ; yet 
he is perfectly distinct from every other writer. He is a 
writer of centos, and yet in originality scarcely inferior to 
Homer. The power of his mind is stamped on every line. 
The fervour of his imagination melts down and renders 
malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory materials. 
In reading his works, we feel ourselves under the influence 
of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it approaches to 
others, becomes more distinct from them. The quantity of 
art in him shews the strength of his genius : the weight of 
his intellectual obligations would have oppressed any other 
writer. Milton's learning has all the effect of intuition. 
He describes objects, of which he could only have read in 
books, with the vividness of actual observation. His imag- 
ination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as 
pictures. 

" Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat 
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks 
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams." 

The word lucid here gives to the idea all the sparkling 
effect of the most perfect landscape. 
And again : 

" As when a vulture on Imaus bred, 
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, 
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey, 
To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids 
On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs 
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams ; 
But in his way lights on the barren plains 
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive 
With sails and wind their cany waggons light." ' 



Milton 105 

If Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, he 
could not have described this scenery and mode of life 
better. Such passages are like demonstrations of natural 
history. Instances might be multiplied without end. 

We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness with 
which he describes visible objects, was owing to their having 
acquired an unusual degree of strength in his mind, after 
the privation of his sight ; but we find the same palpableness 
and truth in the descriptions which occur in his early poems. 
In Lycidas, he speaks of " the great vision of the guarded 
mount," with that preternatural weight of impression with 
which it would present itself suddenly to " the pilot of some 
small night- foundered skiff ; " and the lines in the Pense- 
roso, describing " the wandering moon, 

" Riding near her highest noon, 
Like one that had been led astray 
Through the heaven's wide pathless way," 

are as if he had gazed himself Hind in looking at her. 
There is also the same depth of impression in his descrip- 
tions of the objects of all the different senses, whether 
colours, or sounds, or smells — the same absorption of his 
mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time. It 
has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity 
of criticism, that his ideas were musical rather than pic- 
turesque, as if because they were in the highest degree 
musical, they must be (to keep the sage critical balance 
even, and to allow no one man to possess two qualities at 
the same time) proportionably deficient in other respects. 
But Milton's poetry is not cast in any such narrow, com- 
mon-place mould ; it is not so barren of resources. His 
worship of the Muse was not so simple or confined. A 
sound arises " Hke a steam of rich distilled perfumes ; " 
we hear the pealing organ, but the incense on the altars 
is also there, and the statues of the gods are ranged 



io6 English Literature 

around ! The ear indeed predominates over the eye, because 
it is more immediately afifected, and because the language 
of music blends more immediately with, and forms a more 
natural accompaniment to, the variable and indefinite asso- 
ciations of ideas conveyed by words. But where the associa- 
tions of the imagination are not the principal thing, the 
individual object is given by Milton with equal force and 
beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a char- 
acteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of Adam 
and Eve, of Satan, etc. are always accompanied, in our 
imagination, with the grandeur of the naked figure ; they 
convey to us the ideas of sculpture. As an instance, take the 
following : 

" He soon 
Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, 
The same whom John saw also in the sun : 
His back was turned, but not his brightness hid; 
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar 
Circled his head, nor less his locks behind 
Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings 
Lay waving round ; on some great charge employ'd 
He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep. 
Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope 
To find who might direct his wand'ring flight 
To Paradise, the happy seat of man, 
His journey's end, and our beginning woe. 
But first he casts to change his proper shape. 
Which else might work him danger or delay: 
And now a stripling cherub he appears, 
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face 
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb 
Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he f eign'd : 
Under a coronet his flowing hair 
In curls on either cheek play'd ; wings he wore 
Of many a colour'd plume sprinkled with gold, 
His habit fit for speed succinct, and held 
Before his decent steps a silver wand." 

The figures introduced here have all the elegance and 
precision of a Greek statue ; glossy and impurpled, tinged 



Milton 107 

with golden light, and musical as the strings of Memnon's 
harp ! 

Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait 
of Beelzebub : 

" With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies : " 

Or the comparison of Satan, as he " lay floating many a 
rood," to " that sea beast," 

" Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream ! " 

What a force of imagination is there in this last expression ! 
What an idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of 
created beings, as if it shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and 
took up the sea in its nostrils as a very little thing! Force 
of style is one of Milton's greatest excellences. Hence, 
perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, and less 
afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all im- 
pugners, is to take down the book and read it. 

Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the lan- 
guage (except Shakspeare's) that deserves the name of 
verse. Dr. Johnson, who had modelled his ideas of versi- 
fication on the regular sing-song of Pope, condemns the 
Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall not pretend 
to say that this is not sometimes the case ; for where a 
degree of excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is 
attempted, the poet must sometimes fail. But I imagine 
that there are more perfect examples in Milton of musical 
expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement 
of the verse to the meaning of the passage, th-an in all our 
other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verse, put to- 
gether, (with the exception already mentioned). Spenser 
is the most harmonious of our stanza writers, as Dryden 



io8 English Literature 

is the most sounding and varied of our rhymists. But in 
neither is there anything like the same ear for music, the 
same power of approximating the varieties of poetical to 
those of musical rhythm, as there is in our great epic poet. 
The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of the 
sentiment, almost of the very image. They rise or fall, 
pause or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite art, but without 
the least trick or affectation, as the occasion seems to 
require. 

The following are some of the finest instances : 

" His hand was known 
In Heaven by many a tower'd structure high ; — 
Nor was his name unheard or unador'd 
In ancient Greece ; and in the Ausonian land 
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell 
From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements ; from morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day ; and with the setting sun 
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star 
On Lemnos, the ^gean isle : thus they relate, 
Erring." — 

" But chief the spacious hall 
Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air, 
Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees 
In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, 
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive 
In clusters ; they among fresh dews and flow'rs 
Fly to and fro ; or on the smoothed plank, 
The suburb of their straw-built citadel. 
New rubb'd with balm, expatiate, and confer 
Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd 
Swarm'd and were straiten'd; till the signal giv'n, 
Behold a wonder ! They but now who seem'd 
In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, 
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 
Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race 
Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves, 
Whose midnight revels by a forest side 
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, 



Milton 109 

Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon 

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 

Wheels her pale course : they on their mirth and dance 

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ; 

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds." 

I can give only another instance, though I have some 
difficulty in leaving off. 

" Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood 
So high above the circling canopy 
Of night's extended shade) from th' eastern point 
Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears 
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas 
Beyond the horizon : then from pole to pole 
He views in breadth, and without longer pause 
Down right into the world's first region throws 
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease 
Through the pure marble air his oblique way 
Amongst innumerable stars that shone 
Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds ; 
Or other worlds they seem'd or happy isles," etc. 

The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up 
and down as if it had itself wings. Milton has himself 
given us the theory of his versification — 

" Such as the meeting soul may pierce 
In notes with many a winding bout 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out." 

Dr. Johnson and Pope would have converted his vaulting 
Pegasus into a rocking-horse. Read any other blank verse 
but Milton's, — Thomson's, Young's, Cowper's, Words- 
worth's, — and it will be found, from the want of the same 
insight into '' the hidden soul of harmony," to be mere 
lumbering prose. 

To proceed to a consideration of the merits of Paradise 
Lost, in the most essential point of view, I mean as to the 



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poetry of character and passion. I shall say nothing of the 
fable, or of other technical objections or excellences; but 
I shall try to explain at once the foundation of the interest 
belonging to the poem. I am ready to give up the dialogues 
in Heaven, where, as Pope justly observes, " God the 
Father turns a school-divine ; " nor do I consider the battle 
of the angels as the climax of sublimity, or the most suc- 
cessful effort of Milton's pen. In a word, the interest of 
the poem arises from the daring ambition and fierce pas- 
sions of Satan, and from the account of the paradisaical 
happiness, and the loss of it by our first parents. Three- 
fourths of the work are taken up with these characters, and 
nearly all that relates to them is unmixed sublimity and 
beauty. The two first books alone are like too massy pillars 
of solid gold. 

Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen 
for a poem ; and the execution is as perfect as the design 
is lofty. He was the first of created beings, who, for 
endeavouring to be equal with the highest, and to divide 
the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down 
to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the uni- 
verse ; his means, myriads of angelic armies bright, the 
third part of the heavens, whom he lured after him with 
his countenance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent in 
arms. His ambition was the greatest, and his punishment 
was the greatest ; but not so his despair, for his fortitude 
was as great as his sufiferings. His strength of mind was 
matchless as his strength of body ; the vastness of his de- 
signs did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination with 
which he submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss 
of all good. His power of action and of suffering was 
equal. He was the greatest power that was ever over- 
thrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure. 
He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like a tower; or 



Milton hi 

" As when Heaven's fire 
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines ! " 

He is still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed 
warriors, who own him as their sovereign leader, and with 
whose fate he sympathises as he views them round, far as 
the eye can reach ; though he keeps aloof from them in his 
own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own 
breast. An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath 
his feet, Sin and Death are at his heels, and mankind are 
his easy prey. 

"All is not lost; th' unconquerable will, 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit or yield, 
And what else is not to be overcome," 

are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in 
the magnitude of it ; the fierceness of tormenting flames, 
is qualified and made innoxious by the greater fierceness 
of his pride ; the loss of infinite happiness to himself is 
compensated in thought, by the power of inflicting infinite 
misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle of malig- 
nity, or of the abstract love of evil — but of the abstract 
love of power, of pride, of self-will personified, to which 
last principle all other good and evil, and even his own, 
are subordinate. From this principle he never once flinches. 
His love of power and contempt for suffering are never 
once relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity. His 
thoughts burn like a hell within him ; but the power of 
thought holds dominion in his mind over every other con- 
sideration. The consciousness of a determined purpose, of 
'' that intellectual being, those thoughts that wander 
through eternity," though accompanied with endless pain, 
he prefers to nonentity, to '' being swallowed up and lost 
in the wide womb of uncreated night." He expresses the 



112 English Literature 

sum and substance of all ambition in one line : " Fallen 
cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering ! " 
After such a conflict as his, and such a defeat, to retreat 
in order, to rally, to make terms, to exist at all, is some- 
thing; but he does more than this — he founds a new empire 
in hell, and from it conquers this new world, whither he 
bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way through nether 
and surrounding fires. The poet has not in all this given 
us a mere shadowy outline; the strength is equal to the 
magnitude of the conception. The Achilles of Homer is 
not more distinct; the Titans were not more vast; Prome- 
theus chained to his rock was not a more terrific example 
of suffering and of crime. Wherever the figure of Satan 
is introduced, whether he walks or flies, " rising aloft in- 
cumbent on the dusky air," it is illustrated with the most 
striking and appropriate images : so that we see it always 
before us, gigantic, irregular, portentous, uneasy, and dis- 
turbed — but dazzling in its faded splendour, the clouded 
ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only in the 
depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to excite 
our loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are not there, 
poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered spirit, of the 
writhing agonies within. Milton was too magnanimous 
and open an antagonist to support his argument by the 
bye-tricks of a hump and cloven foot; to bring into the 
fair field of controversy the good old catholic prejudices of 
which Tasso and Dante have availed themselves, and which 
the mystic German critics would restore. He relied on 
the justice of his cause, and did not scruple to give the 
devil his due. Some persons may think that he has carried 
his liberality too far, and injured the cause he professed 
to espouse by making him the chief person in his poem. 
Considering the nature of his subject, he would be equally 
in danger of running into this fault, from his faith in 



Milton 113 

religion, and his love of rebellion; and perhaps each of 
these motives had its full share in determining the choice 
of his subject. 

Not only the figure of Satan, but his speeches in council, 
his soHloquies, his address to Eve, his share in the war in 
heaven, or in the fall of man, show the same decided su- 
periority of character. To give only one instance, almost 
the first speech he makes: 

" Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, 
Said then the lost archangel, this the seat 
That we must change for Heaven ; this mournful gloom 
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he 
Who now is sov'rain can dispose and bid 
What shall be right: farthest from him is best, 
Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made supreme 
Above his equals. Farewell happy fields, 
Where joy for ever dwells : Hail horrors, hail 
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell, 
Receive thy new possessor ; one who brings 
A mind not to be chang'd by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. 
What matter where, if I be still the same, 
And what I should be, all but less than he 
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least 
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built 
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence : 
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, 
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell : 
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven." 

The whole of the speeches and debates in Pandemonium 
are well worthy of the place and the occasion — with Gods 
for speakers, and angels and archangels for hearers. There 
is a decided manly tone in the arguments and sentiments, 
an eloquent dogmatism, as if each person spoke from thor- 
ough conviction ; an excellence which Milton probably bor- 
rowed from his spirit of partisanship, or else his spirit of 
partisanship from the natural firmness and vigour of his 



114 English Literature 

mind. In this respect Milton resembles Dante, (the only 
modern writer with whom he has any thing in common) 
and it is remarkable that Dante, as well as Milton, was 
a political partisan. That approximation to the severity of 
impassioned prose which has been made an objection to 
Milton's poetry, and which is chiefly to be met with in these 
bitter invectives, is one of its great excellences. The author 
might here turn his philippics against Salmasius to good 
account. The rout in Heaven is like the fall of some 
mighty structure, nodding to its base, " with hideous ruin 
and combustion down." But, perhaps, of all the passages 
in Paradise Lost, the description of the employments of 
the angels during the absence of Satan, some of whom 
" retreated in a silent valley, sing with notes angelical to 
many a harp their own heroic deeds and hapless fall by 
doom of battle " is the most perfect example of mingled 
pathos and sublimity. — What proves the truth of this noble 
picture in every part, and that the frequent complaint of 
want of interest in it is the fault of the reader, not of the 
poet, is that when any interest of a practical kind takes a 
shape that can be at all turned into this, (and there is 
little doubt that Milton had some such in his eye in writing 
it,) each party converts it to its own purposes, feels the 
absolute identity of these abstracted and high speculations ; 
and that, in fact, a noted political writer of the present 
day has exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan in 
the Paradise Lost, by applying it to a character whom he 
considered as after the devil, (though I do not know 
Whether he would make even that exception) the greatest 
enemy of the human race. This may serve to show that 
Milton's Satan is not a very insipid personage. 

Of Adam and Eve it has been said, that the ordinary 
reader can feel little interest in them, because they have 
none of the passions, pursuits, or even relations of human 



Milton 115 

life, except that of man and wife, the least interesting of 
all others, if not to the parties concerned, at least to the 
by-standers. The preference has on this account been given 
to Homer, who, it is said, has left very vivid and infinitely 
diversified pictures of all the passions and affections, public 
and private, incident to human nature, — the relations of 
son, of brother, parent, friend, citizen, and many others. 
Longinus preferred the Iliad to the Odyssey, on account of 
the greater number of battles it contains ; but I can neither 
agree to his criticism, nor assent to the present objection. 
It is true, there is little action in this part of Milton's poem ; 
but there is much repose, and more enjoyment. There are 
none of the every-day occurrences, contentions, disputes, 
wars, fightings, feuds, jealousies, trades, professions, liv- 
eries, and common handicrafts of life ; " no kind of traffic ; 
letters are not known; no use of service, of riches, poverty, 
contract, succession, bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard 
none; no occupation, no treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, 
gun, nor need of any engine." So much the better ; thank 
Heaven, all these were yet to come. But still the die was 
cast, and in them our doom was sealed. In them 

" The generations were prepared ; the pangs, 
The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife 
Of poor humanity's afflicted will. 
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." 

In their first false step we trace all our future woe, with 
loss of Eden. But there was a short and precious interval 
between, like the first blush of morning before the day 
is overcast with tempest, the dawn of the world, the birth 
of nature from " the unapparent deep," with its first dews 
and freshness on its cheek, breathing odours. Theirs was 
the first delicious taste of life, and on them depended all 
that was to come of it. In them hung trembling all our 



ii6 English Literature 

hopes and fears. They were as yet alone in the world, 
in the eye of nature, wondering at their new being, full of 
enjoyment and enraptured with one another, with the voice 
of their Maker walking in the garden, and ministering angels 
attendant on their steps, winged messengers from heaven 
like rosy clouds descending in their sight. Nature played 
around them her virgin fancies wild ; and spread for them 
a repast where no crude surfeit reigned. Was there nothing 
in this scene, which God and nature alone witnessed, to 
interest a modern critic? What need was there of action, 
where the heart was full of bliss and innocence without it ! 
They had nothing to do but feel their own happiness, and 
'' know to know no more." " They toiled not, neither 
did they spin ; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
like one of these." All things seem to acquire fresh sweet- 
ness, and to be clothed with fresh beauty in their sight. 
They tasted as it were for themselves and us, of all that 
there ever was pure in human bliss. " In them the burthen 
of the mystery, the heavy and the weary weight of all this 
unintelHgible world, is lightened." They stood awhile per- 
fect, but they afterwards fell, and were driven out . of 
Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had 
done of bhss. But their pangs were such as a pure spirit 
might feel at the sight — their tears " such as angels weep." 
The pathos is of that mild contemplative kind which arises 
from regret for the loss of unspeakable happiness, and 
resignation to inevitable fate. There is none of the fierce- 
ness of intemperate passion, none of the agony of mind 
and turbulence of action, which is the result of the habitual 
struggles of the will with circumstances, irritated by re- 
peated disappointment, and constantly setting its desires 
most eagerly on that which there is an impossibility of 
attaining. This would have destroyed the beauty of the 
whole picture. They had received their unlooked-for hap- 



Milton 117 

piness as a free gift from their Creator's hands, and they 
submitted to its loss, not without sorrow, but without im- 
pious and stubborn repining. 

" In either hand the hast'ning angel caught 
Our Hng'ring parents, and to th' eastern gate 
Led them direct, and down the chff as fast 
To the subjected plain; then disappear'd. 
They looking back, all th' eastern side beheld 
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, 
Wav'd over by that flaming brand, the gate 
With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms : 
Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon; 
The world was all before them, where to choose 
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide." 



VI 

POPE 

The question, whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet 
been settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was 
not a great poet, he must have been a great prose-writer, 
that is, he was a great writer of some sort. He was a 
man of exquisite faculties, and of the most refined taste ; 
and as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction of 
poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally 
passed for a poet, and a good one. If, indeed, by a great 
poet, we mean one who gives the utmost grandeur to our 
conceptions of nature, or the utmost force to the passions 
of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a great poet; for 
the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay the clean 
contrary way ; namely, in representing things as they appear 
to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice and pas- 
sion, as in his Critical Essays ; or in representing them in 
the most contemptible and insignificant point of view, as in 
his Satires ; or in clothing the little with mock-dignity, as 
in his poems of Fancy; or in adorning the trivial incidents 
and familiar relations of life with the utmost elegance of 
expression, and all the flattering illusions of friendship or 
self-love, as in his Epistles. He was not then distinguished 
as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with 
a passionate sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep 
insight into the workings of the heart; but he was a wit, 
and a critic, a man of sense, of observation, and the world, 
with a k©en relish for the elegances of art, or of nature 
when embelHshed by art, a quick tact for propriety of 

ii8 



Pope 119 

thought and manners as estabHshed by the forms and cus- 
toms of society, a refined sympathy with the sentiments and 
habitudes of human Hfe, as he felt them within the Httle 
circle of his family and friends. He was, in a word, the 
poet, not of nature, but of art; and the distinction between 
the two, as well as I can make it out, is this — The poet 
of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, of 
power, and of passion in his own breast, sympathises with 
whatever is beautiful, and grand, and impassioned in 
nature, in its simple majesty, in its immediate appeal to 
the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all men; so that 
the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony 
of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very 
soul of nature ; to be identified with and to foreknow and to 
record the feelings of all men at all times and places, as 
they are liable to the same impressions ; and to exert the 
same power over the minds of his readers, that nature does. 
He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as 
they are ; he feels them in their universal interest, for he 
feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our 
common nature. Such was Homer, such was Shakspeare, 
whose works will last as long as nature, because they are 
a copy of the indestructible forms and everlasting impulses 
of nature, welling out from the bosom as from a perennial 
spring, or stamped upon the senses by the hand of their 
maker. The power of the imagination in them, is the repre- 
sentative power of all nature. It has its centre in the 
human soul, and makes the circuit of the universe. 

Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the 
first rank of it. He saw nature only dressed by art; he 
judged of beauty by fashion; he sought for truth in the 
opinions of the world; he judged of the feelings of others 
by his own. The capacious soul of Shakspeare had an 
intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could enter 



120 English Literature 

into the heart of man in all possible circumstances : Pope 
had an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, 
wished or wanted. Milton has winged his daring flight 
from heaven to earth, through Chaos and old Night. Pope's 
Muse never wandered with safety, but from his Hbrary to 
his grotto, or from his grotto into his library back again. 
His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his own garden, 
than on the garden of Eden ; he could describe the faultless 
whole-length mirror that reflected his own person, better 
than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face 
of heaven — a piece of cut-glass or a pair of paste buckles 
with more brilliance and effect, than a thousand dew-drops 
glittering in the sun. He would be more delighted with a 
patent lamp, than with '' the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow," 
that fills the skies with its soft silent lustre, that trembles 
through the cottage window, and cheers the watchful 
mariner on the lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of 
personality and of poHshed Hfe. That which was nearest 
to him, was the greatest ; the fashion of the day bore sway 
in his mind over the immutable laws of nature. He pre- 
ferred the artificial to the natural in external objects, be- 
cause he had a stronger fellow-feeling with the self-love 
of the maker or proprietor of a gewgaw, than admiration of 
that which was interesting to all mankind. He preferred 
the artificial to the natural in passion, because the involun- 
tary and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried him away 
with a force and vehemence with which he could not grap- 
ple; while he could trifle with the conventional and super- 
ficial modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or 
admire, put them on or off like a masquerade dress, make 
much or little of them, indulge them for a longer or a 
shorter time, as he pleased ; and because while they amused 
his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they never once dis- 
turbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His mind 



Pope 121 

was the antithesis of strength and grandeur; its power was 
the power of indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm 
of poetry: he was in poetry what the sceptic is in reUgion. 

It cannot be denied, that his chief excellence lay more 
in diminishing, than in aggrandizing objects; in checking, 
not in encouraging our enthusiasm; in sneering at the 
extravagances of fancy or passion, instead of giving a 
loose to them; in describing a row of pins and needles, 
rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans; 
in penning a lampoon or a compHment, and in praising 
Martha Blount. 

Shakspeare says, 

" In Fortune's ray and brightness 
The herd hath more annoyance by the brize 
Than by the tyger : but when the splitting wind 
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, 
And flies fled under shade, why then 
The thing of courage, 

As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise ; 
And with an accent tuned in the self-same key, 
Replies to chiding Fortune." 

There is none of this rough work in Pope. His Muse 
was on a peace-establishment, and grew somewhat effem- 
inate by long ease and indulgence. He lived in the smiles 
of fortune, and basked in the favour of the great. In his 
smooth and poHshed verse we meet with no prodigies of 
nature, but with miracles of wit; the thunders of his pen 
are whispered flatteries ; its forked lightnings pointed sar- 
casms; for '' the gnarled oak," he gives us ''the soft myr- 
tle : " for rocks, and seas, and mountains, artificial grass- 
plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling rills; for earthquakes and 
tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot, or the fall of a 
china jar; for the tug and war of the elements, or the 
deadly strife of the passions, we have 

" Calm contemplation and poetic ease." 



122 English Literature 

Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, 
and that how exquisite, was contained ! What discrimina- 
tion, what wit, what dehcacy, what fancy, what lurking 
spleen, what elegance of thought, what pampered refine- 
ment of sentiment ! It is like looking at the world through 
a microscope, where everything assumes a new character 
and a new consequence, where things are seen in their 
minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference; 
where the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, 
and the beautiful deformed. The wrong end of the mag- 
nifier is, to be sure, held to every thing, but still the exhibi- 
tion is highly curious, and we know not whether to be most 
pleased or surprised. Such, at least, is the best account 
I am able to give of this extraordinary man, without doing 
injustice to him or others. It is time to refer to particular 
instances in his works. — The Rape of the Lock is the best 
or most ingenious of these. It is the most exquisite speci- 
men of Ullagree work ever invented. It is admirable in 
proportion as it is made of nothing. 

" More subtle web Arachne cannot spin, 
Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see 
Of scorched dew, do not in th' air more lightly flee." 

It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The most glit- 
tering appearance is given to every thing, to paste, poma- 
tum, billet-doux, and patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe 
around ; — the atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A 
toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar raised 
to the goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin 
is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are 
spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic 
diction, to set off the meanest things. The balance between 
the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, is as nicely 
trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little 



Pope 123 

is made great, and the great little. You hardly know 
whether to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignifi- 
cance, the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the per- 
fection of the mock-heroic ! I will give only the two fol- 
lowing passages in illustration of these remarks. Can any- 
thing be more elegant and graceful than the description of 
Belinda, in the beginning of the second canto? 

" Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain, 
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main, 
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams 
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames. 
Fair nymphs, and well-drest youths around her shone, 
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone. 
On her white breast a sparkHng cross she wore, 
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. 
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose. 
Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those : 
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends ; 
Oft she rejects, but never once offends. 
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike ; 
And like the sun, they shine on all alike. 
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride. 
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: 
If to her share some female errors fall. 
Look on her face, and. you'll forget 'em all. 

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, 
Nourish'd two locks, which graceful hung behind 
In equal curls, and well conspir'd to deck 
With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck." 

The following is the introduction to the account of 
Belinda's assault upon the baron bold, who had dissevered 
one of these locks " from her fair head for ever and for 
ever." 

" Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd, 
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. 
(The same his ancient personage to deck, 
Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck, 
In three seal-rings ; which after, fhelted down, 
Form'd a vast buckle for his widow's gown : 



124 English Literature 

Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew, 
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew: 
Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs, 
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.)" 

I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the original 
idea, or the delightful execution of this poem, to the Lutrin 
of Boileau. 

The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of 
wit and fancy, as the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. 
The quantity of thought and observation in this work, for 
so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it, is won- 
derful : unless we adopt the supposition, that most men of 
genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what 
they themselves have learned under twenty. The concise- 
ness and felicity of the expression is equally remarkable. 
Thus in reasoning on the variety of men's opinions, he 
says — 

" 'Tis with our judgments, as our watches ; none 
Go just ahke, yet each beheves his own." 

Nothing can be more original and happy than the general 
remarks and illustrations in the Essay: the critical rules 
laid down are too much those of a school, and of a confined 
one. There is one passage in the Essay on Criticism in 
which the author speaks with that eloquent enthusiasm of 
the fame of ancient writers, which those will always feel 
who have themselves any hope or chance of immortality. 
I have quoted the passage elsewhere, but I will repeat it 
here. 

" Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, 
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; 
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, 
Destructive war, and all-involving age. 
Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, 
Immortal heirs of universal praise! 



Pope 125 

Whose honours with increase of ages grow, 
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow." 

These lines come with double force and beauty on the 

reader as they were dictated by the writer's despair of 

ever attaining that lasting glory which he celebrates with 

such disinterested enthusiasm in others, from the lateness 

of the age in which he lived, and from his writing in a 

tongue, not understood by other nations, and that grows 

obsolete and unintelligible to ourselves at the end of every 

second century. But he needed not have thus antedated his 

own poetical doom — the loss and entire oblivion of that 

which can never ^die. If he had known, he might have 

boasted that his " little bark " wafted down the stream of 

time, 

'' With theirs should sail. 
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale " — 

if those who know how to set a due value on the blessing, 
were not the last to decide confidently on their own pre- 
tensions to it. 

There is a cant in the present day about genius, as every 
thing in poetry: there was a cant in the time of Pope 
about sense, as performing all sorts of wonders. It was a 
kind of watchword, the shibboleth of a critical party of 
the day. As a proof of the exclusive attention which it 
occupied in their minds, it is remarkable that in the Essay 
on Criticism (not a very long poem) there are no less than 
half a score successive couplets rhyming to the word sense. 
This appears almost incredible without giving the instances, 
and no less so when they are given. 

" But of the two, less dangerous is the offence, 
To tire our patience than mislead our sense." lines z, A- 

" In search of wit these lose their common sense, 
And then turn critics in their own defence." /. 28, 29. 



126. English Literature 

" Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, 
And fills up all the mighty void of sense." /. 209, 10. 

"Some by old words to fame have made pretence, 
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense." /. 324, 5. 

" 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence ; 
The sound must seem an echo to the sense." /. 364, 5. 

" At every trifle scorn to take offence ; 
That always shews great pride, or little sense." /. 386^.7. 

" Be silent always, when you doubt your sense, 
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence." /. 366, 7. 

" Be niggards of advice on no pretence, 
For the worst avarice is that of sense." /. 578, 9. 

" Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense. 
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence." /. 608, 9. 

" Horace still charms with graceful negligence, 
And without method talks us into sense." /. 653, 4. 

I have mentioned this the more for the sake of those 
critics who are bigotted idolisers of our author, chiefly on 
the score of his correctness. These persons seem to be of 
opinion that '' there is but one perfect wTiter, even Pope." 
This is, however, a mistake : his excellence is by no means 
faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is full of little 
errors. His grammatical construction is often lame and 
imperfect. In the Abelard and Eloise, he says — 

" There died the best of passions, Love and Fame." 

This is not a legitimate ellipsis. Fame is not a passion, 
though love is : but his ear was evidently confused by 
the meeting of the sounds '' love and fame," as if they of 
themselves immediately implied '' love, and love of fame." 
Pope's rhymes are constantly defective, being rhymes to 
the eye instead of the ear; and this to a greater degree, 



Pope 127 

not only than in later, but than in preceding writers. The 
praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform 
smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, 
which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and 
execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same 
sentence for the purpose of the rhyme, which shews either 
a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punc- 
tilious exactness. But to have done with this. 

The Epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only exception 
I can think of, to the general spirit of the foregoing re- 
marks ; and I should be disingenuous not to acknowledge 
that it is an exception. The foundation is in the letters 
themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which are quite as im- 
pressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a poem: 
it is finer as a piece of high-wrought eloquence. No woman 
could be supposed to write a finer love-letter in verse. Be- 
sides the richness of the historical materials, the high gusto 
of the original sentiments which Pope had to work upon, 
there were perhaps circumstances in his own situation 
which made him enter into the subject with even more 
than a poet's feeling. The tears shed are drops gushing 
from the heart : the words are burning sighs breathed from 
the soul of love. Perhaps the poem to which it bears the 
greatest similarity in our language, is Dryden's Tancred 
and Sigismunda, taken from Boccaccio. Pope's Eloise will 
bear this comparison ; and after such a test, with Boccaccio 
for the original author, and Dryden for the translator, it 
need shrink from no other. There is something exceedingly 
tender and beautiful in the sound of the concluding lines : 

" If ever chance two wandering lovers brings 
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs," etc. 

The Essay on Man is not Pope's best work. It is a 
theory which Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him, 



128 English Literature 

and which he expanded into verse. But " he spins the 
thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argu- 
ment." All that he says, " the very words, and to the self- 
same tune," would prove just as well that whatever is, is 
wrong, as that whatever is, is right. The Dunciad has 
splendid passages, but in general it is dull, heavy, and 
mechanical. The sarcasm already quoted on Settle, the 
Lord Mayor's poet, (for at that time there was a city as 
well as a court poet) 

" Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, 
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more " — 

is the finest inversion of immortality conceivable. It is 
even better than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs 
of glory, the triumphant bards of antiquity ! 

The finest burst of severe moral invective in all Pope, 
is the prophetical conclusion of the epilogue to the Satires : 

" Virtue may chuse the high or low degree, 
'Tis just alike to virtue, and to me; 
Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king, 
She's still the same belov'd, contented thing. 
Vice is undone if she forgets her birth, 
And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth. 
But 'tis the Fall degrades her to a whore : 
Let Greatness own her, and she's mean no more. 
Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess, 
Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless ; 
In golden chains the willing world she draws, 
And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws ; 
Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head, 
And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead. 
Lo ! at the wheels of her triumphal car. 
Old England's Genius, rough with many a scar, 
Dragged in the dust ! his arms hang idly round. 
His flag inverted trails along the ground ! 
Our youth, all livery'd o'er with foreign gold. 
Before her dance ; behind her, crawl the old ! 
See thronging millions to the Pagod run. 
And offer country, parent, wife, or son! 



Pope 129 

Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim, 

That not to be corrupted is the shame. 

In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in pow'r, 

'Tis av'rice all, ambition is no more ! 

See all our nobles begging to be slaves ! 

See all our fools aspiring to be knaves ! 

The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore, 

Are what ten thousand envy and adore : 

All, all look up with reverential awe, 

At crimes that 'scape or triumph o'er the law ; 

While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry : 

Nothing is sacred now but villainy. 

Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain) 

Show there was one who held it in disdain." 



His Satires are not in general so good as his Epistles. 
His enmity is effeminate and petulant from a sense of 
weakness, as his friendship was tender from a sense of 
gratitude. I do not Hke, for instance, his character of 
Chartres, or his characters of women. His delicacy often 
borders upon sickliness ; his fastidiousness makes others 
fastidious. But his compliments are divine; they are equal 
in value to a house or an estate. Take the following. In 
addressing Lord Mansfield, he speaks of the grave as a 
scene, 

" Where Murray, long enough his country's pride, 
Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde." 

To Bolingbroke he says — 

" V/hy rail they then if but one wreath of mine, 
Oh all-accomplished St. John, deck thy shrine?" 

Again, he has bequeathed this praise to Lord Cornbury — 

" Despise low thoughts, low gains : 
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains; 
Be virtuous and be happy for your pains." 



130 English Literature 

One would think (though there is no knowing) that a 
descendant of this nobleman, if there be such a person 
Hving, could hardly be guilty of a mean or paltry action. 

The finest piece of personal satire in Pope (perhaps in 
the world) is his character of Addison; and this, it may 
be observed, is of a mixed kind, made up of his respect for 
the man, and a cutting sense of his failings. The other 
finest one is that of Buckingham, and the best part of that 
is the pleasurable 

" Alas ! how changed from him, 
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim : 
Gallant and gSLy, in Cliveden's proud alcove, 
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love!" 

Among his happiest and most inimitable effusions are 
the Epistles to Arbuthnot, and to Jervas the painter ; amia- 
ble patterns of the delightful unconcerned life, blending 
ease with dignity, which poets and painters then led. Thus 
he says to Arbuthnot — 



"Why did I write? What sin to me unknown 
Dipp'd me in ink, my parents' or my own? 
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. 
I left no calling for this idle trade, 
No duty broke, no father disobey'd : 
The Muse but served to ease some friend, not wife; 
To help me through this long disease, my life; 
To second, Arbuthnot ! thy art and care, 
And teach the being you preserv'd to bear. 

But why then publish? Granville the polite, 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ; 
Well-natur'd Garth, inflam'd with early praise, 
And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays; 
The, courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read; 
E'en mitred Rochester would nod the head ; 
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
With open arms receiv'd one poet more. 



Pope 131 

Happy my studies, when by these approv'd ! 
Happier their author, when by these belov'd ! 
From these the world will judge of men and books, 
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks." 

I cannot help giving also the conclusion of the Epistle to 
Jervas. 

" Oh, lasting as those colours may they shine, 
Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line; 
New graces yearly like thy works display, 
Soft without weakness, without glaring gay ; 
Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains ; 
And finish'd more through happiness than pains. 
The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire, 
One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre. 
Yet should the Graces all thy figures place. 
And breathe an air divine on ev'ry face ; 
Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll 
Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul ; 
With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater vie, 
And these be sung till Granville's Myra die: 
Alas ! how little from the grave we claim ! 
Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name." 



And shall we cut ourselves off from beauties like these 
with a theory? Shall we shut up our books, and seal up 
our senses, to please the dull spite and inordinate vanity 
of those *' who have eyes, but they, see not — ears, but they 
hear not — and understandings, but they understand not," — 
and go about asking our blind guides, whether Pope was 
a poet or not? It will never do. Such persons, when you 
point out to them a fine passage in Pope, turn it off to 
something of the same sort in some other writer. Thus 
they say that the line, " I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers 
came," is pretty, but taken from that of Ovid — Et quum 
conabar scrihcre, versus erat. They are safe in this mode 
of criticism : there is no danger of any one's tracing their 
writings to the classics. 



132 English Literature 

Pope's letters and prose writings neither take away from, 
nor add to his poetical reputation. There is, occasionally, 
a littleness of manner, and an unnecessary degree of cau- 
tion. He appears anxious to say a good thing in every 
word, as well as every sentence. They, however, give a 
very favourable idea of his moral character in all respects; 
and his letters to Atterbury, in his disgrace and exile, do 
equal honour to both. If I had to choose, there are one 
or two persons, and but one or two, that I should like to 
have been better than Pope! 



VII 

ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 

" The proper study of mankind is man." 

I NOW come to speak of that sort of writing which has 
been so successfully cultivated in this country by our period- 
ical Essayists, and which consists in applying the talents 
and resources of the mind to all that mixed mass of human 
affairs, which, though not included under the head of any 
regular art, science, or profession, falls under the cognisance 
of the writer, and " comes home to the business and bosoms 
of men." Quicquid agunt homines nostri farrago lihelli, 
is the general motto of this department of literature. It 
does not treat of minerals or fossils, of the virtues of 
plants, or the influence of planets ; it does not meddle with 
forms of belief or systems of philosophy, nor launch into 
the world of spiritual existences; but it makes familiar 
with the world of men and women, records theirs actions, 
assigns their motives, exhibits their whims, characterises 
their pursuits in all their singular and endless variety, 
ridicules their absurdities, exposes their inconsistencies, 
'' holds the mirror up to nature, and shews the very age 
and body of the time its form and pressure ; " takes min- 
utes of our dress, air, looks, words, thoughts, and actions; 
shews us what we are, and what we are not; plays the 
whole game of human life over before us, and by making 
us enlightened spectators of its many-coloured scenes, en- 
ables us (if possible) to become tolerably reasonable agents 
in the one in which we have to perform a part. '* The act 

133 



134 English Literature 

and practic part of life is thus made the mistress of our 
theorique." It is the best and most natural course of study. 
It is in morals and manners what the experimental is in 
natural philosophy, as opposed to the dogmatical method. 
It does not deal in sweeping clauses of proscription and 
anathema, but in nice distinction and liberal constructions. 
It makes up its general accounts from details, its few 
theories from many facts. It does not try to prove all 
black or all white as it wishes, but lays on the intermediate 
colours, (and most of them not unpleasing ones,) as it 
finds them blended with '' the web of our life, which is of 
a mingled yarn, good and ill together." It inquires what 
human life is and has been, to shew what it ought to be. 
It follows it into courts and camps, into town and country, 
into rustic sports or learned disputations, into the various 
shades of prejudice or ignorance, of refinement or barbar- 
ism, into its private haunts or public pageants, into its weak- 
nesses and littlenesses, its professions and its practices — 
before it pretends to distinguish right from wrong, or one 
thing from another. How, indeed, should it do so other- 
wise ? 

" Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, 
Plenius et melius' Chrysippo et Crantore dicit." 

The writers I speak of are, if not moral philosophers, moral 
historians, and that's better : or if they are both, they found 
the one character upon the other; their premises precede 
their conclusions; and we put faith in their testimony, for 
we know that it is true. 

Montaigne was the first person who in his Essays led 
the way to this kind of writing among the moderns. The 
great merit of Montaigne then was, that he may be said 
to have been the first who had the courage to say as an 
author what he felt as a man. And as courage is generally 



On the Periodical Essayists 135 

the effect of conscious strength, he was probably led to 
do so by the richness, truth, and force of his own observa- 
tions on books and men. He was, in the truest sense, a 
man of original mind, that is, he had the power of looking 
at things for himself, or as they really were, instead of 
blindly trusting to, and fondly repeating what others told 
him that they were. He got rid of the go-cart of prejudice 
and affectation, with the learned lumber that follows at 
their heels, because he could do without them. In taking 
up his pen he did not set up for a philosopher, wit, orator, 
or moralist, but he became all these by merely daring to 
tell us whatever passed through his mind, in its naked 
simplicity and force, that he thought any ways worth com- 
municating. He did not, in the abstract character of an 
author, undertake to say all that could be said upon a sub- 
ject, but what in his capacity as an inquirer after truth 
he happened to know about it. He was neither a pedant nor 
a' bigot. He neither supposed that he was bound to know 
all things, nor that all things were bound to conform to 
what he had fancied or would have them to be. In treating 
of men and manners, he spoke of them as he found them, 
not according to preconceived notions and abstract dogmas ; 
and he began by teaching us what he himself was. In 
criticising books he did not compare them with rules and 
systems, but told us what he saw to like or dislike in them. 
He did not take his standard of excellence '' according to 
an exact scale " of Aristotle, or fall out with a work that 
was good for any thing, because " not one of the angles 
at the four corners was a right one." He was, in a word, 
the first author who was not a bookmaker, and who wrote 
not to make converts of others to established creeds and 
prejudices, but to satisfy his own mind of the truth of 
things. In this respect we know not which to be most 
charmed with, the author or the man. There is an inex- 



136 English Literature 

pressible frankness and sincerity, as well as power, in what 
he writes. There is no attempt at imposition or conceal- 
ment, no juggling tricks or solemn mouthing, no laboured 
attempts at proving himself always in the right, and every 
body else in the wrong; he says what is uppermost, lays 
open what floats at the top or the bottom of his mind, and 
deserves Pope's character of him, where he professes to 

" pour out all as plain 



As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne." * 

He does not converse with us Hke a pedagogue with his 
pupil, whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as 
himself, but like a philosopher and friend who has passed 
through life with thought and observation, and is willing 
to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and profit. 
A writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to me as much 
superior to a common bookworm, as a library of real books 
is superior to a mere book-case, painted and lettered on 
the outside with the names of celebrated works. As he 
was the first to attempt this new way of writing, so the 
same strong natural impulse which prompted the under- 
taking, carried him to the end of his career. The same 
force and honesty of mind which urged him to throw off 
the shackles of custom and prejudice, would enable him 
to complete his triumph over them. He has left little for 
his successors to atchieve in the way of just and original 
speculation on human life. Nearly all the thinking of 
the two last centuries of that kind which the French de- 
nominate morale ohservatrice, is to be found in Montaigne's 
Essays: there is the germ, at least, and generally much 
more. He sowed the seed and cleared away the rubbish, 
even where others have reaped the fruit, or cultivated and 

* Why Pope should say in reference to him, " Or more wise 
Charron," is not easy to determine. 



On the Periodical Essayists 137 

decorated the soil to a greater degree of nicety and perfec- 
tion. There is no one to whom the old Latin adage is more 
applicable than to Montaigne, " Pereant isti qui ante nos 
nostra dixenint." There has been no new impulse given 
to thought since his time. Among the specimens of criti- 
cisms on authors which he has left us, are those on Virgil, 
Ovid, and Boccaccio, in the account of books which he 
thinks worth reading, or (which is the same thing) which 
he finds he can read in his old age, and which may be 
reckoned among the few criticisms which are worth reading 
at any age."^ 

*As an instance of his general power of reasoning, I shall give 
his chapter entitled One Man's Profit is Anothei'^s Loss, in which 
he has nearly anticipated Mandeville's celebrated paradox of private 
vices being pubHc benefits : — 

" Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, who fur- 
nished out funerals, for demanding too great a price for his goods : 
and if he got an estate, it must be by the death of a great many 
people: but I think it a sentence ill grounded, forasmuch as no 
profit can be made, but at the expense of some other person, and 
that every kind of gain is by that rule liable to be condemned. 
The tradesman thrives by the debauchery of youth, and the farmer 
by the dearness of corn ; the architect by the ruin of buildings, 
the officers of justice by quarrels and law-suits; nay, even the 
honour and functions of divines is owing to our mortality and 
vices. No physician takes pleasure in the health even of his best 
friends, said the ancient Greek comedian, nor soldier in the peace 
of his country ; and so of the rest. And, what is yet worse, let 
every one but examine his own heart, and he will find, that his 
private wishes spring and grow up at the expense of some other 
person. Upon which consideration this thought came into my 
head, that nature does not hereby deviate from her general policy; 
for the naturalists hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase 
of any one thing, is the decay and corruption of another: 

Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit, 
Continuo hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante. i.e. 

For what from its own confines chang'd doth pass, 
Is straight the death of what before it was." 

Vol. I, Chap. XXI. 



138 ■ English Literature 

Montaigne's Essays were translated into English by 
Charles Cotton, who was one of the wits and poets of the 
age of Charles II ; and Lord Halifax, one of the noble 
critics of that day, declared it to be " the book in the world 
he was the best pleased with." This mode of familiar 
Essay-writing, free from the trammels of the schools, and 
the airs of professed authorship, was successfully imitated, 
about the same time, by Cowley and Sir William Temple, 
in their miscellaneous Essays, which are very agreeable and 
learned talking upon paper. Lord Shaftesbury, on the 
contrary, who aimed at the same easy, degage mode of 
communicating his thoughts to the world, has quite spoiled 
his matter, which is sometimes valuable, by his manner, 
in which he carries a certain flaunting, flowery, figurative, 
flirting style of amicable condescension to the reader, to an 
excess more tantalising than the most starched and ridicu- 
lous formality of the age of James I. There is nothing 
so tormenting as the affectation of ease and freedom from 
affectation. 

The ice being thus thawed, and the barrier that kept 
authors at a distance from common-sense and feeling broken 
through, the transition was not difficult from Montaigne 
and his imitators, to our Periodical Essayists. These last 
applied the same unrestrained expression of their thoughts 
to the more immediate and passing scenes of life, to tem- 
porary and local matters; and in order to discharge the 
invidious office of Censor Morum more freely, and with less 
responsibility, assumed some fictitious and humorous dis- 
guise, which, however, in a great degree corresponded to 
their own peculiar habits and character. By thus conceal- 
ing their own name and person under the title of the Tatler, 
Spectator, etc. they were enabled to inform us more fully 
of what was passing in the world, while the dramatic con- 
trast and ironical point of view to which the whole is 



On the Periodical Essayists 139 

subjected, added a greater liveliness and piquancy to the 
descriptions. The philosopher and wit here commences 
newsmonger, makes himself master of '' the perfect spy o' 
th' time," and from his various walks and turns through 
life, brings home little curious specimens of the humours, 
opinions, and manners of his contemporaries, as the botanist 
brings home different plants and weeds, or the mineralogist 
different shells and fossils, to illustrate their several theories, 
and be useful to mankind. 

The first of these papers that was attempted in this 
country was set up by Steele in the beginning of the last 
century; and of all our Periodical Essayists, the Tatler 
(for that was the name he assumed) has always appeared 
to me the most amusing and agreeable. Montaigne, whom 
I have proposed to consider as the father of this kind of 
personal authorship among the moderns, in which the reader 
is admitted behind the curtain, and sits down with the 
writer in his gown and slippers, was a most magnanimous 
and undisguised egotist; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. was 
the more disinterested gossip of the two. The French 
author is contented to describe the peculiarities of his own 
mind and constitution, which he does with a copious and 
unsparing hand. The English journalist good-naturedly lets 
you into the secret both of his own affairs and those of 
others. A young lady, on the other side Temple Bar, 
cannot be seen at her glass for half a day together, but 
Mr. Bickerstaff takes due notice of it; and he has the first 
intelligence of the symptoms of the belle passion appearing 
in any young gentleman at the West-end of the town. The 
departures and arrivals of widows with handsome jointures, 
either to bury their grief in the country, or to procure a 
second husband in town, are punctually recorded in his. 
pages. He is well acquainted with the celebrated beauties 
of the preceding age at the court of Charles II; and the 



140 English Literature 

old gentleman (as he feigns himself) often grows romantic 
in recounting *' the disastrous strokes which his youth suf- 
fered " from the glances of their bright eyes, and their 
unaccountable caprices. In particular, he dwells with a 
secret satisfaction on the recollection of one of his mis- 
tresses, who left him for a richer rival, and whose constant 
reproach to her husband, on occasion of any quarrel be- 
tween them, was " I, that might have married the famous 
Mr. BickerstafT, to be treated in this manner ! " The club 
at the Trumpet consists of a set of persons almost as well 
worth knowing as himself. The cavalcade of the justice 
of the peace, the knight of the shire, the country squire, 
and the young gentleman, his nephew, who came to wait on 
him at his chambers, in such form and ceremony, seem 
not to have settled the order of their precedence to this 
hour ; * and I should hope that the upholsterer and his com- 
panions, who used to sun themselves in the Green Park, 
and who broke their rest and fortunes to maintain the 
balance of power in Europe, stand as fair a chance for 
immortality as some modern politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff 
himself is a gentleman and a scholar, a humourist, and a 
man of the world; with a great deal of nice easy naivete 
about him. If he walks out and is caught in a shower of 
rain, he makes amends for this unlucky accident by a 
criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes with a bur- 
lesque copy of verses on a city-shower. He entertains us, 
when he dates from his own apartment, with a quotation 
from Plutarch, or a moral reflection; from the Grecian 
coffee-house with poHtics ; and from Wills', or the Temple, 
with the poets and players, the beaux and men of wit and 
pleasure about town. In reading the pages of the Tatler, 
we seem as if suddenly carried back to the age of Queen 
Anne, of toupees and full-bottomed periwigs. The whole 

*No. 125. 



On the Periodical Essayists 141 

appearance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful 
metamorphosis. The beaux and the belles are of a quite 
different species from what they are at present ; we dis- 
tinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty fellows, 
as they pass by Mr. Lilly's shop-windows in the Strand ; 
we are introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the 
scenes; are made familiar with the persons and perform- 
ances of Will Estcourt or Tom Durfey ; we listen to a dispute 
at a tavern, on the merits of the Duke of Marlborough, or 
Marshal Turenne; or are present at the first rehearsal of 
a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem by Mr. 
Pope. The privilege of thus virtually transporting our- 
selves to past times, is even greater than that of visiting 
distant places in reahty. London, a hundred years ago, 
would be much better worth seeing than Paris at the present 
moment. 

It will be said, that all this is to be found, in the same 
or a greater degree, in the Spectator. For myself, I do 
not think so ; or at least, there is in the last work a much 
greater proportion of commonplace matter. I have, on 
this account, always preferred the Tatler to the Spectator. 
Whether it is owing to my having been earlier or better 
acquainted with the one than the other, my pleasure in 
reading these two admirable works is not in proportion to 
their comparative reputation. The Tatler contains only 
half the number of volumes, and, I will venture to say, 
nearly an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. " The 
first sprightly runnings " are there : it has more of the 
original spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of nature. 
The indications of character and strokes of humour are 
more true and frequent ; the reflections that suggest them- 
selves arise more from the occasion, and are less spun out 
into regular dissertations. They are more like the remarks 
which occur in sensible conversation, and less like a lecture. 



142 English Literature 

Something is left to the understanding of the reader. Steele 
seems to have gone into his closet chiefly to set down what 
he observed out of doors. Addison seems to have spent 
most of his time in his study, and to have spun out and 
wire-drawn the hints, which he borrowed from Steele, or 
took from nature, to the utmost. I am far from wishing to 
depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do justice 
to Steele, who was, I think, upon the whole, a less artificial 
and more original writer. The humorous descriptions of 
Steele resemble loose sketches, or fragments of a comedy; 
those of Addison are rather comments or ingenious para- 
phrases on the genuine text. The characters of the club, not 
only in the Tatler, but in the Spectator, w^ere drawn by 
Steele. That of Sir Roger de Coverley is among the 
number. Addison has, however, gained himself immortal 
honour by his manner of filling up this last character. Who 
is there that can forget, or be insensible to, the inimitable 
nameless graces and varied traits of nature and of old 
English character in it — to his unpretending virtues and 
amiable weaknesses — to his modesty, generosity, hospitality, 
and eccentric whims — to the respect of his neighbours, and 
the affection of his domestics — to his wayward, hopeless, 
secret passion for his fair enemy, the widow, in which there 
is more of real romance and true delicacy than in a thou- 
sand tales of knight-errantry — (we perceive the hectic flush 
of his cheek, the faltering of his tongue in speaking of her 
bewitching airs and '' the whiteness of her hand ") — to the 
havoc he makes among the game in his neighbourhood — to 
his speech from the bench, to shew the Spectator what is 
thought of him in the country — to his unwillingness to be 
put up as a sign-post, and his having his own likeness 
turned into the Saracen's head — to his gentle reproof of 
the baggage of a gipsy that tells him " he has a widow in 
his line of life " — to his doubts as to the existence of witch- 



On the Periodical Essayists 143 

craft, and protection of reputed witches — to his account of 
the family pictures, and his choice of a chaplain — to his 
falling asleep at church, and his reproof of John Williams, 
as soon as he recovered from his nap, for talking in 
sermon-time. The characters of Will. Wimble and Will. 
Honeycomb are not a whit behind their friend, Sir Roger, 
in delicacy and felicity. The delightful simplicity and 
good-humoured officiousness in the one, are set off by the 
graceful affectation and courtly pretension in the other. 
How long since I first became acquainted with these two 
characters in the Spectator! What old-fashioned friends 
they seem, and yet I am not tired of them, like so many 
other friends, nor they of me ! How airy these abstractions 
of the poet's pen stream over the dawn of our acquaintance 
with human life ! how they glance their fairest colours on 
the prospect before us ! how pure they remain in it to the 
last, like the rainbow in the evening-cloud, which the rude 
hand of time and experience can neither soil nor dissipate ! 
What a pity that we cannot find the reaHty, and yet if we 
did, the dream would be over. I once thought I knew a 
Will. Wimble, and a Will. Honeycomb, but they turned out 
but indifferently ; the originals in the Spectator still read, 
word for word, the same that they always did. We have 
only to turn to the page, and find them where we left them ! 
— Many of the most exquisite pieces in the Tatler, it is to 
be observed, are Addison's, as the Court of Honour, and 
the Personification of Musical Instruments, with almost all 
those papers that form regular sets or series. I do not 
know whether the picture of the family of an old college 
acquaintance, in the Tatler, where the children run to let 
Mr. Bickerstaff in at the door, and where the one that 
loses the race that way, turns back to tell the father that 
he is come; with the nice gradation of incredulity in the 
little boy who is got into Guy of Warwick, and the Seven 



144 English Literature 

Champions, and who shakes his head at the improbability 
of ^sop's Fables, is Steele's or Addison's, though I believe 
it belongs to the former. The account of the two sisters, 
one of whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from 
having on a pair of flowered garters, and that of the mar- 
ried lady who complained to the Tatler of the neglect of 
her husband, with her answers to some home questions that 
were put to her, are unquestionably Steele's. — If the Tatler 
is not inferior to the Spectator as a record of manners 
and character, it is superior to it in the interest of many 
of the stories. Several of the incidents related there by 
Steele have never been surpassed in the heart-rending pathos 
of private distress. I might refer to those of the lover 
and his mistress, when the theatre, in which they were, 
caught fire; of the bridegroom, who by accident kills his 
bride on the day of their marriage ; the story of Mr. Eustace 
and his wife ; and the fine dream about his own mistress 
when a youth. What has given its. superior reputation to 
the Spectator, is the greater gravity of its pretensions, its 
moral dissertations and critical reasonings, by which I con- 
fess myself less edified than by other things, which are 
thought more lightly of. Systems and opinions change, but 
nature is always true. It is the moral and didactic tone 
of the Spectator which makes us apt to think of Addison 
(according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as " a parson in a 
tie-wig." Many of his moral Essays are, however, ex- 
quisitely beautiful and quite happy. Such are the reflections 
on cheerfulness, those in Westminster Abbey, on the Royal 
Exchange, and particularly some very affecting ones on 
the death of a young lady in the fourth volume. These, it 
must be allowed, are the perfection of elegant sermonising. 
His critical Essays are not so good. I prefer Steele's occa- 
sional selection of beautiful poetical passages, without any 
affectation of analysing their beauties, to Addison's finer- 



On the Periodicx\l Essayists 145 

spun theories. The best criticism in the Spectator, that 
on the Cartoons of Raphael, of which Mr. Fuseh has availed 
himself with great spirit in his Lectures, is by Steele."^ 
I owed this acknowledgment to a writer who has so often 
put me in good humour with myself, and every thing about 
me, when few things else could, and when the tomes of 
casuistry and ecclesiastical history, with which the little 
duodecimo volumes of the Tatler were overwhelmed and 
surrounded, in the only library to which I had access when 
a boy, had tried their tranquiUising effects upon me in 
vain. I had not long ago in my hands, by favour of a 
friend, an original copy of the quarto edition of the Tatler, 
wath a list of the subscribers. It is curious to see some 
names there which we should hardly think of (that of Sir 
Isaac Newton is among them,) and also to observe the 
degree of interest excited by those of the different persons, 
which is not determined according to the rules of the 
Herald's College. One hterary name lasts as long as a 
whole race of heroes and their descendants ! The Guardian, 
which followed the Spectator, was, as may be supposed, 
inferior to it. 

The dramatic and conversational turn which forms the 
distinguishing feature and greatest charm of the Spectator 
and Tatler, is quite lost in the Rambler by Dr. Johnson. 
There is no reflected light thrown on human life from an 
assumed character, nor any direct one from a display of the 
author's own. The Tatler and Spectator are, as it were, 
made up of notes and memorandums of the events and inci- 
dents of the day, with finished studies after nature, and 
characters fresh from the life, which the writer moralises 



* The antithetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so 
fond of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the sub- 
stantive, such as " proud submission and dignified obedience," are, 
I think, first to be found in the Tatler. 



146 English Literature 

upon, and turns to account as they come before him : the 
Rambler is a collection of moral Essays, or scholastic theses, 
written on set subjects, and of which the individual char- 
acters and incidents are merely artificial illustrations, 
brought in to give a pretended rehef to the dryness of 
didactic discussion. The Rambler is a splendid and im- 
posing common-place-book of general topics, and rhetorical 
declamation on the conduct and business of human life. 
In this sense, there is hardly a reflection that has been 
suggested on such subjects which is not to be found in 
this celebrated work, and there is, perhaps, hardly a reflec- 
tion to be found in it which had not been already suggested 
and developed by some other author, or in the common 
course of conversation. The mass of intellectual wealth 
here heaped together is immense, but it is rather the result 
of gradual accumulation, the produce of the general intel- 
lect, labouring in the mine of knowledge and reflection, 
than dug out of the quarry, and dragged into the light by 
the industry and sagacity of a single mind. I am not here 
saying that Dr. Johnson was a man without originality, 
compared with the ordinary run of men's minds, but he 
was not a man of original thought or genius, in the sense 
in which Montaigne or Lord Bacon was. He opened no 
new vein of precious ore, nor did he light upon any single 
pebbles of uncommon size and unrivalled lustre. We seldom 
meet with anything to " give us pause ; " he does not set 
us thinking for the first time. His reflections present 
themselves like reminiscences ; do not disturb the ordinary 
march of our thoughts ; arrest our attention by the state- 
liness of their appearance, and the costliness of their garb, 
but pass on and mingle with the throng of our impressions. 
After closing the volumes of the Rambler, there i? nothing 
that we remember as a new truth gained to the mind, 
nothing indelibly stamped upon the memory; nor is there 



On the Periodical Essayists 147 

any passage that we wish to turn to as embodying any 
known principle or observation, with such force and beauty 
that justice can only be done to the idea in the author's own 
words. Such, for instance, are many of the passages to 
be found in Burke, which shine by their own light, belong 
to no class, have neither equal nor counterpart, and of 
which we say that no one but the author could have written 
them ! There is neither the same boldness of design, nor 
mastery of execution in Johnson. In the one, the spark of 
genius seems to have met with its congenial matter : the 
shaft is sped; the forked lightning dresses up the face of 
nature in ghastly smiles, and the loud thunder rolls far 
away from the ruin that is made. Dr. Johnson's style, on 
the contrary, resembles rather the rumbling of mimic 
thunder at one of our theatres ; and the light he throws upon 
a subject is like the dazzling effect of phosphorus, or an 
ignis fat mis of words. There is a wide difference, however, 
between perfect originality and perfect common-place : 
neither ideas nor expressions are trite or vulgar because 
they are not quite new. They are valuable, and ought to be 
repeated, if they have not become quite common ; and John- 
son's style both of reasoning and imagery holds the middle 
rank between startling novelty and vapid common-place. 
Johnson has as much originality of thinking as Addison ; but 
then he wants his familiarity of illustration, knowledge 
of character, and delightful humour. What most distin- 
guishes Dr. Johnson from other writers is the pomp and 
uniformity of his style. All his periods are cast in the 
same mould, are of the same size and shape, and conse- 
quently have little fitness to the variety of things he pro- 
fesses to treat of. His subjects are familiar, but the author 
is always upon stilts. He has neither ease nor simplicity, 
and his efforts at playfulness, in part, remind one of the 
lines in Milton : — 



148 English Literature 

" The elephant 

To make them sport wreath'd his proboscis lithe." 

His Letters from Correspondents, in particular, are more 
pompous and unwieldy than what he writes in his own person. 
This want of relaxation and variety of manner has, I think, 
after the first effects of novelty and surprise were over, 
been prejudicial to the matter. It takes from the general 
power, not only to please, but to instruct. The monotony 
of style produces an apparent monotony of ideas. What 
is really striking and valuable, is lost in the vain ostentation 
and circumlocution of the expression; for when we find the 
same pains and pomp of diction bestowed upon the most 
trifling as upon the most important parts of a sentence or 
discourse, we grow tired of distinguishing between preten- 
sion and reality, and are disposed to confound the tinsel 
and bombast of the phraseology with want of weight in 
the thoughts. Thus, from the imposing and oracular nature 
of the style, people are tempted at first to imagine that our 
author's speculations are all wisdom and profundity: till 
having found out their mistake in some instances, they 
suppose that there is nothing but common-place in them, 
concealed under verbiage and pedantry ; and in both they 
are wrong. The fault of Dr. Johnson's style is, that it 
reduces all things to the same artificial and unmeaning level. 
It destroys all shades of difference, the association between 
words and things. It is a perpetual paradox and innova- 
tion. He condescends to the familiar till we are ashamed of 
our interest in it : he expands the little till it looks big. " If 
he were to write a fable of little fishes," as Goldsmith said 
of him, " he would make them speak like great whales." 
We can no more distinguish the most familiar objects in his 
descriptions of them, than we can a well-known face under 
a huge painted mask. The structure of his sentences, which 
was his own invention, and which has been generally imi- 



On the Periodical Essayists 149 

tated since his time, is a species of rhyming in prose, where 
one clause answers to another in measure and quantity, like 
the tagging of syllables at the end of a verse ; the close of 
the period follows as mechanically as the oscillation of a 
pendulum, the sense is balanced with the sound ; each sen- 
tence, revolving round its centre of gravity, is contained 
with itself like a couplet, and each paragraph forms itself 
into a stanza. Dr. Johnson is also a complete balance- 
master in the topics of morality. He never encourages 
hope, but he counteracts it by fear ; he never elicits a truth, 
but he suggests some objection in answer to it. He seizes 
and alternately quits the clue of reason, lest it should 
involve him in the labyrinths of endless error: he wants 
confidence in himself and his fellows. He dares not trust 
himself with the immediate impressions of things, for fear 
of compromising his dignity ; or follow them into their con- 
sequences, for fear of committing his prejudices. His 
timidity is the result, not of ignorance, but of morbid appre- 
hension. '' He runs the great circle, and is still at home." 
No advance is made by his writings in any sentiment, or 
mode of reasoning. Out of the pale of established author- 
ity and received dogmas, all is sceptical, loose, and desul- 
tory : he seems in imagination to strengthen the dominion 
of prejudice, as he weakens and dissipates that of reason ; 
and round the rock of faith and power, on the edge of which 
he slumbers blindfold and uneasy, the waves and billows 
of uncertain and dangerous opinion roar and heave for 
evermore. His Rasselas is the most melancholy and de- 
bilitating moral speculation that ever was put forth. 
Doubtful of the faculties of his mind, as of his organs of 
vision, Johnson trusted only to his feelings and his fears. 
He cultivated a belief in witches as an out-guard to the 
evidences of religion ; and abused Milton, and patronised 
Lauder, in spite of his aversion to his countrymen, as a step 



150 English Literature 

to secure the existing establishment in church and state. 
This was neither right feehng nor sound logic. 

The most triumphant record of the talents and character 
of Johnson is to be found in Boswell's Life of him. The 
man was superior to the author. When he threw aside his 
pen, which he regarded as an incumbrance, he became not 
only learned and thoughtful, but acute, witty, humorous, 
natural, honest ; hearty and determined, '' the king of good 
fellows and wale of old men." There are as many smart 
repartees, profound remarks, and keen invectives to be 
found in Boswell's " inventory of all he said," as are re- 
corded of any celebrated man. The life and dramatic play 
of his conversation forms a contrast to his written works. 
His natural powers and undisguised opinions were called 
out in convivial intercourse. In public, he practised with 
the foils on : in private, he unsheathed the sword of con- 
troversy, and it was '' the Ebro's temper." The eagerness 
of opposition roused him from his natural sluggishness and 
acquired timidity ; be returned blow for blow ; and whether 
the trial were of argument or wit, none of his rivals could 
boast much of the encounter. Burke seems to have been 
the only person who had a chance with him ; and it is the 
unpardonable sin of Boswell's work, that he has purposely 
omitted their combats of strength and skill. Goldsmith 
asked, " Does he wind into a subject like a serpent, as Burke 
does ? " And when exhausted with sickness, he himself 
said, " If that fellow Burke were here now, he would kill 
me." It is to be observed, that Johnson's colloquial style 
was as blunt, direct, and downright, as his style of studied 
composition was involved and circuitous. As when Topham 
Beauclerc and Langton knocked him up at his chambers, 
at three in the morning, and he came to the door with the 
poker in his hand, but seeing them, exclaimed, '' What, is 
it you, my lads ? then I'll have a frisk with you ! " and 



On the Periodical Essayists 151 

he afterwards reproaches Langton, who was a literary 
milksop, for leaving them to go to an engagement " with 
some un-idead girls," What words to come from the mouth 
of the great moralist and lexicographer ! His good deeds 
were as many as his good sayings. His domestic habits, 
his tenderness to servants, and readiness to oblige his 
friends; the quantity of strong tea that he drank to keep 
down sad thoughts; his many labours reluctantly begun, 
and irresolutely laid aside; his honest acknowledgment of 
his own, and indulgence to the weaknesses of others ; his 
throwing himself back in the post-chaise with Boswell, and 
saying, '' Now I think I am a good-humoured fellow," 
though nobody thought him so, and yet he was ; his quitting 
the society of Garrick and his actresses, and his reason 
for it; his dining with Wilkes, and his kindness to Gold- 
smith ; his sitting with the young ladies on his knee at the 
Mitre, to give them good advice, in which situation, if not 
explained, he might be taken for Falstaff; and last and 
noblest, his carrying the unfortunate victim of disease and 
dissipation on his back up through Fleet Street, (an act 
which realises the parable of the good Samaritan) — all 
these, and innumerable others, endear him to the reader, 
and must be remembered to his lasting honour. He had 
faults, but they lie buried with him. He had his prejudices 
and his intolerant feelings ; but he suffered enough in the 
conflict of his own mind with them. For if no man can 
be happy in the free exercise of his reason, no wise man 
can be happy without it. His were not time-serving, heart- 
less, hypocritical prejudices; but deep, inwoven, not to be 
rooted out but with life and hope, which he found from 
old habit necessary to his own peace of mind, and thought 
so to the peace of mankind. I do not hate, but love him 
for them. They were between himself and his conscience ; 
and should be left to that higher tribunal, " where they in 



152 English Literature 

trembling hope repose, the bosom of his Father and his 
God." In a word, he has left behind him few wiser or 
better men. 

The herd of his imitators shewed what he was by their 
disproportionate effects. The Periodical Essayists, that suc- 
ceeded the Rambler, are, and deserve to be, little read at 
present. The Adventurer, by Hawksworth, is completely 
trite and vapid, aping all the faults of Johnson's style, 
without any thing to atone for them. The sentences are 
often absolutely unmeaning; and one half of each might 
regularly be left blank. The World, and Connoisseur, which 
followed, are a Httle better; and in the last of these there 
is one good idea, that of a man in indifferent health, who 
judges of every one's title to respect from their possession 
of this blessing, and bows to a sturdy beggar with sound 
limbs and a florid complexion, while he turns his back 
upon a lord who is a valetudinarian. 

Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, like all his works, 
bears the stamp of the author's mind. It does not " go 
about to cozen reputation without the stamp of merit." He 
is more observing, more original, more natural and pic- 
turesque than Johnson. His work is written on the model 
of the Persian Letters ; and contrives to give an abstracted 
and somewhat perplexing view of things, by opposing for- 
eign prepossessions to our own, and thus stripping objects 
of their customary disguises. Whether truth is elicited in 
this collision of contrary absurdities, I do not know; but 
I confess the process is too ambiguous and full of intricacy 
to be very amusing to my plain understanding. For. light 
summer reading, it is like walking in a garden full of traps 
and pitfalls. It necessarily gives rise to paradoxes, and 
there are some very bold^ ones in the Essays, which would 
subject an author less established to no very agreeable sort 
of censura literaria. Thus the Chinese philosopher exclaims 



On the Periodical Essayists 153 

very unadvisedly, '' The bonzes and priests of all religions 
keep up superstition and imposture: all reformations begin 
with the laity." Goldsmith, however, was staunch in his 
practical creed, and might bolt speculative extravagances 
with impunity. There is a striking difference in this respect 
between him and Addison, who, if he attacked authority, 
took care to have common sense on his side, and never 
hazarded anything offensive to the feelings of others, or 
on the strength of his own discretional opinion. There is 
another inconvenience in this assumption of an exotic char- 
acter and tone of sentiment, that it produces an incon- 
sistency between the knowledge which the individual has 
time to acquire, and which the author is bound to com- 
municate. Thus the Chinese has not been in England three 
days before he is acquainted with the characters of the 
three countries which compose this kingdom, and describes 
them to his friend at Canton, by extracts from the news- 
papers of each metropolis. The nationality of Scotchmen 
is thus ridiculed : — "" Edinburgh. We are positive when we 
say, that Sanders Macgregor, lately executed for horse- 
stealing, is not a native of Scotland, but born at Carrick- 
fergus." Now this is very good ; but how should our 
Chinese philosopher find it out by instinct? Beau Tibbs, 
a prominent character in this little work, is the best comic 
sketch since the time of Addison ; unrivalled in his finery, 
his vanity, and his poverty. 

I have only to mention the names of the Lounger and the 
Mirror, which are ranked by the author's admirers with 
Sterne for sentiment, and with Addison for humour. I shall 
not enter into that : but I know that the story of La Roche 
is not like the story of Le Fevre, nor one hundredth part 
so good. Do I say this from prejudice to the author? No : 
for I have read his novels. Of the Man of the World I 
cannot think so favourably as some others; nor shall I 



154 English Literature 

here dwell on the picturesque and romantic beauties ef 
Julia de Roubigne, the early favourite of the author of 
Rosamond Gray ; but of the Man of Feeling I would speak 
with grateful recollections : nor is it possible to forget the 
sensitive, irresolute, interesting Harley ; and that lone figure 
of Miss Walton in it, that floats in the horizon, dim and 
ethereal, the day-dream of her lover's youthful fancy- 
better, far better than all the realities of life! 



VIII 

THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 

There is an exclamation in one of Gray's Letters — " Be 
mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Cre- 
billon ! " — If I did not utter a similar aspiration at the 
conclusion of the last new novel which I read (I would 
not give offence by being more particular as to the name) 
it was not from any want of affection for the class of 
writing to which it belongs: for, without going so far as 
the celebrated French philosopher, who thought that more 
was to be learnt from good novels and romances than from 
the gravest treatises on history and morality, yet there are 
few works to which I am oftener tempted to turn for 
profit or delight, than to the standard productions in this 
species of composition. We find there a close imitation 
of men and manners ; we see the very web and texture of 
society as it really exists, and as we meet with it when we 
come into the world. ' If poetry has " something more divine 
in it/' this savours more of humanity. We are brought 
acquainted with the motives and characters of mankind, 
imbibe our notions of virtue and vice from practical exam- 
ples, and are taught a knowledge of the world through the 
airy medium of romance. As a record of past manners and 
opinions, too, such writings afford the best and fullest in- 
formation. For example, I should be at a loss where to 
find in any authentic documents of the same period so 
satisfactory an account of the general state of society, and 
of moral, political, and religious feeling in the reign of 

155 



156 English Literature 

George II, as we meet with in the Adventures of Joseph 
Andrews and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams. This work, 
indeed, I take to be a perfect piece of statistics in its kind. 
In looking into any regular history of that period, into a 
learned and eloquent charge to a grand jury or the clergy 
of a diocese, or into a tract on controversial divinity, we 
should hear only of the ascendancy of the Protestant suc- 
cession, the horrors of Popery, the triumph of civil and 
religious liberty, the wisdom and moderation of the sov- 
ereign, the happiness of the subject, and the flourishing 
state of manufactures and commerce. But if we really 
wish to know what all these fine-sounding names come to, 
we cannot do better than turn to the works of those, who 
having no other object than to imitate nature, could only 
hope for success from the fidelity of their pictures; and 
were bound (in self-defence) to reduce the boasts of vague 
theorists and the exaggerations of angry disputants to the 
mortifying standard of reality. Extremes are said to meet : 
and the works of imagination, as they are called, sometimes 
come the nearest to truth and nature. Fielding in speaking 
on this subject, and vindicating the use and dignity of the 
style of writing in which he excelled against the loftier 
pretensions of professed historians, says that in their pro- 
ductions nothing is true but the names and dates, whereas 
in his everything is true but the names and dates. If so, 
he has the advantage on his side. 

I will here confess, however, that I am a little prejudiced 
on the point in question; and that the effect of many fine 
speculations has been lost upon me, from an early famil- 
iarity with the most striking passages in the work to which 
I have just alluded. Thus nothing can be more captivating 
than the description somewhere given by Mr. Burke of 
the indissoluble connection between learning and nobihty; 
and of the respect universally paid by wealth to piety and 



1 



The English Novelists 157 

morals. But the effect of this ideal representation has 
always been spoiled by my recollection of Parson Adams 
sitting over his cup of ale in Sir Thomas Booby's kitchen. 
Echard " On the Contempt of the Clergy " is, in Hke 
manner, a very good book, and '' worthy of all accepta- 
tion : " but, somehow, an unlucky impression of the reality 
of Parson TruUiber involuntarily checks the emotions of 
respect, to which it might otherwise give rise : while, on 
the other hand, the lecture which Lady Booby reads to 
Lawyer Scout on the immediate expulsion of Joseph and 
Fanny from the parish casts no very favourable light on 
the flattering accounts of our practical jurisprudence which 
are to be found in Blackstone or De Lolme. The most 
moral writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to 
inculcate any moral. The professed moralist almost un- 
avoidably degenerates into the partisan of a system ; and 
the philosopher is too apt to warp the evidence to his own 
purpose. But the painter of manners gives the facts of 
human nature, and leaves us to draw the inference : if we 
are not able to do this, or do it ill, at least it is our own 
fault. 

The first-rate writers in this class, of course, are few ; but 
those few we may reckon among the greatest ornaments 
and best benefactors of our kind. There is a certain set 
of them who, as it were, take their rank by the side of 
reality, and are appealed to as evidence on all questions 
concerning human nature. The principal of these are 
Cervantes and Le Sage, who may be considered as having 
been naturalised among ourselves ; and, of native English 
growth. Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, and Sterne.* As 

* It is not to be forgotten that the author of Robinson Crusoe was 
also an EngHshman. His other works, such as the Life of Colonel 
Jack, &c., are of the same cast, and leave an impression on the mind 
more like that of things than words. 



158 English Literature 

this is a department of criticism which deserves more atten- 
tion than has been usually bestowed upon it, I shall here 
venture to recur (not from choice, but necessity) to what 
I have said upon it in a well-known periodical publication ; 
and endeavour to contribute my mite towards settling the 
standard of excellence, both as to degree and kind, in these 
several writers. . . . 

There is very little to warrant the common idea that 
Fielding was an imitator of Cervantes, except his own 
declaration of such an intention in the title-page of Joseph 
Andrews, the romantic turn of the character of Parson 
Adams (the only romantic character in his works), and 
the proverbial humour of Partridge, which is kept up only 
for a few pages. Fielding's novels are, in general, thor- 
oughly his own; and they are thoroughly English. What 
they are most remarkable for, is neither sentiment, nor 
imagination, nor wit, nor even humour, though there is an 
immense deal of this last quality; but profound knowledge 
of human nature, at least of English nature ; and masterly 
pictures of the characters of men as he saw them existing. 
This quality distinguishes all his works, and is shown almost 
equally in all of them. As a painter of real life, he was 
equal to Hogarth ; as a mere observer of human nature, he 
was little inferior to Shakspeare, though without any of the 
genius and poetical qualities of his mind. His humour is 
less rich and laughable than Smollett's ; his wit as often 
misses as hits ; he has none of the fine pathos of Richardson 
or Sterne; but he has brought together a greater variety 
of characters in common life, marked with more distinct 
peculiarities, and without an atom of caricature, than any 
other novel writer whatever. The extreme subtlety of ob- 
servation on the springs of human conduct in ordinary 
characters, is only equalled by the ingenuity of contrivance 
in bringing those springs into play, in such a manner as 



The English Novelists 159 

to lay open their smallest irregularity. The detection is 
always complete, and made with the certainty and skill of 
a philosophical experiment, and the obviousness and famil- 
iarity of a casual observation. The truth of the imitation 
is indeed so great, that it has been argued that Fielding 
must have had his materials ready-made to his hands, and 
was merely a transcriber of local manners and individual 
habits. For this conjecture, however, there seems to be no 
foundation. His representations, it is true, are local and 
individual; but they are not the less profound and con- 
clusive. The feeling of the general principles of human 
nature, operating in particular circumstances, is always in- 
tense, and uppermost in his mind ; and he makes use of 
incident and situation only to bring out character. 

It is scarcely necessary to give any illustrations. Tom 
Jones is full of them. There is the account, for example, 
of the gratitude of the elder Blifil to his brother, for 
assisting him to obtain the fortune of Miss Bridget Al- 
worthy by marriage; and of the gratitude of the poor in 
his neighbourhood to Alworthy himself, who had done so 
much good in the country that he had made every one in 
it his enemy. There is the account of the Latin dialogues 
between Partridge and his maid, of the assault made on 
him during one of these by Mrs. Partridge, and the severe 
bruises he patiently received on that occasion, after which 
the parish of Little Haddington rung with the story, that 
the school-master had killed his wife. There is the exquisite 
keeping in the character of Blifil, and the want of it in that 
of Jones. There is the gradation in the lovers of Molly 
Seagrim ; the philosopher Square succeeding to Tom Jones, 
who again finds that he himself had succeeded to the accom- 
plished Will. Barnes, who had the first possession of her 
person, and had still possession of her heart, Jones being 
only the instrument of her vanity, as Square was of her 



i6o English Literature 

interest. Then there is the discreet honesty of Black 
George, the learning of Thwackum and Square, and the 
profundity of Squire Western, who considered it as a 
physical impossibility that his daughter should fall in love 
with Tom Jones. We have also that gentleman's disputes 
with his sister, and the inimitable appeal of that lady to 
her niece. — " I was never so handsome as you, Sophy : yet 
I had something of you formerly. I was called the cruel 
Parthenissa. Kingdoms and states, as Tully Cicero says, 
undergo alteration, and so must the human form ! " The 
adventure of the same lady with the highwayman, who 
robbed her of her jewels while he complimented her beauty, 
ought not to be passed over, nor that of Sophia and her 
muff, nor the reserved coquetry of her cousin Fitzpatrick, 
nor the description of Lady Bellaston, nor the modest over- 
tures of the pretty widow Hunt, nor the indiscreet babblings 
of Mrs. Honour. The moral of this book has been ob- 
jected to, without much reason; but a more serious objec- 
tion has been made to the want of refinement and elegance 
in two principal characters. We never feel this objection, 
indeed, while we are reading the book; but at other times 
we have something like a lurking suspicion that Jones was 
but an awkward fellow, and Sophia a pretty simpleton. I 
do not know how to account for this effect, unless it is that 
Fielding's constantly assuring us of the beauty of his hero, 
and the good sense of his heroine, at last produces a distrust 
of both. The story of Tom Jones is allowed to be un- 
rivalled : and it is this circumstance, together with the vast 
variety of characters, that has given the History of a 
Foundling so decided a preference over Fielding's other 
novels. The characters themselves, both in Amelia and 
Joseph Andrews, are quite equal to any of those in Tom 
Jones. The account of Miss Matthews and Ensign Hibbert, 
in the former of these ; the way in which that lady recon- 



i 



The English Novelists i6i 

ciles herself to the death of her father ; the inflexible Colonel 
B^th ; the insipid Mrs. James, the complaisant Colonel 
Trent, the demure, sly, intriguing, equivocal Mrs. Bennet, 
the lord who is her seducer, and who attempts afterwards 
to seduce Amelia by the same mechanical process of a 
concert-ticket, a book, and the disguise of a great-coat; his 
little, fat, short-nosed, red-faced, good-humoured accom- 
plice, the keeper of the lodging-house, who, having no 
pretensions to gallantry herself, has a disinterested delight 
in forwarding the intrigues and pleasures of others (to say 
nothing of honest Atkinson, the story of the miniature- 
picture of Amelia, and the hashed mutton, which are in 
a different style,) are masterpieces of description. The 
whole scene at the lodging-house, the masquerade, etc., in 
Amelia, are equal in interest to the parallel scenes in Tom 
Jones, and even more refined in the knowledge of character. 
For instance, Mrs. Bennet is superior to Mrs. Fitzpatrick 
in her own way. The uncertainty, in which the event of 
her interview with her former seducer is left, is admirable. 
Fielding was a master of what may be called the double 
entendre of character, and surprises you no less by what 
he leaves in the dark, (hardly known to the persons them- 
selves) than by the unexpected discoveries he makes of 
the real traits and circumstances in a character with which, 
till then, you find you were unacquainted. There is nothing 
at all heroic, however, in the usual style of his delineations. 
He does not draw lofty characters or strong passion? ; all 
his persons are of the ordinary stature as to intellect ; and 
possess little elevation of fancy, or energy of purpose. Per- 
haps, after all, Parson Adams is his finest character. It 
is equally true to nature, and more ideal than any of the 
others. Its unsuspecting simplicity makes it not only more 
amiable, but doubly amusing, by gratifying the sense of 
superior sagacity in the reader. Our laughing at him does 



i62 English Literature 

not once lessen our respect for him. His declaring that 
he would willingly walk ten miles to fetch his sermon on 
vanity, merely to convince Wilson of his thorough contempt 
of this vice, and his consoHng himself for the loss of his 
^schylus, by suddenly recollecting that he could not read it 
if he had it, because it is dark, are among the finest touches 
of naivete. The night-adventures at Lady Booby's with 
Beau Didapper, and the amiable Slipslop, are the most 
ludicrous; and that with the huntsman, who draws oi¥ the 
hounds from the poor Parson, because they would be spoiled 
by following vermin, the most profound. Fielding did not 
often repeat himself; but Dr. Harrison, in Amelia, may 
be considered as a variation of the character of Adams : so 
also is Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield; and the latter part 
of that work, which sets out so delightfully, an almost 
entire plagiarism from Wilson's account of himself, and 
Adams's domestic history. 

Smollett's first novel, Roderick Random, which is also 
his best, appeared about the same time as Fielding's Tom 
Jones ; and yet it has a much more modern air with it : 
but this may be accounted for from the circumstance that 
Smollett was quite a young man at the time, whereas Field- 
ing's manner must have been formed long before. The 
style of Roderick Random is more easy and flowing than 
that of Tom Jones ; the incidents follow one another more 
rapidly (though, it must be confessed, they never come in 
such a throng, or are brought out with the same dramatic 
effect) ; the humour is broader, and as effectual ; and there 
is very nearly, if not quite, an equal interest excited by the 
story. What, then, is it that gives the superiority to Field- 
ing? It is the superior insight into the springs of human 
character, and the constant developement of that character 
through every change of circumstance. Smollett's humour 
often arises from the situation of the persons, or the pecul- 



The English Novelists 163 

iarity of their external appearance; as, from Roderick 
Random's carrotty locks, which hung down over his shoul- 
ders like a pound of candles, or Strap's ignorance of 
London, and the blunders that follow from it. There is a 
tone of vulgarity about all his productions. The incidents 
frequently resemble detached anecdotes taken from a news- 
paper or magazine; and, like those in Gil Bias, might 
happen to a hundred other characters. He exhibits the 
ridiculous accidents and reverses to which human life is 
Hable, not " the stuff " of which it is composed. He seldom 
probes to the quick, or penetrates beyond the surface ; and, 
therefore, he leaves no stings in the minds of his readers, 
and in this respect is far less interesting than Fielding. 
His novels always enliven, and never tire us : we take them 
up with pleasure, and lay them down without any strong 
feeling of regret. We look on and laugh, as spectators of 
a highly amusing scene, without closing in with the com- 
batants, or being made parties in the event. We read 
Roderick Random as an entertaining story; for the par- 
ticular accidents and modes of Hfe which it describes have 
ceased to exist: 'but we regard Tom Jones as a real history; 
because the author never stops short of those essential prin- 
ciples which lie at the bottom of all our actions, and in 
which we feel an immediate interest — intus et in cute. 
Smollett excels most as the lively caricaturist: Fielding as 
the exact painter and profound metaphysician. I am far 
from maintaining that this account applies uniformly to the 
productions of these two writers; but I think that, as far 
as they essentially differ, what I have stated is the general 
distinction between them. Roderick Random is the purest 
of Smollett's novels : I mean in point of style and descrip- 
tion. Most of the incidents and characters are supposed 
to have been taken from the events of his own life; and 
are, therefore, truer to nature. There is a rude conception 



164 English Literature 

of generosity in some of his characters, of which Fielding 
seems to have been incapable, his amiable persons being 
merely good-natured. It is owing to this that Strap is 
superior to Partridge; as there is a heartiness and warmth 
of feeling in some of the scenes between Lieutenant Bowling 
and his nephew, which is beyond Fielding's power of im- 
passioned writing. The whole of the scene on ship-board 
is a most admirable and striking picture, and, I imagine, 
very little if at all exaggerated, though the interest it excites 
is of a very unpleasant kind, because the irritation and 
resistance to petty oppression can be of no avail. The 
picture of the little profligate French friar, who was Rod- 
erick's travelling companion, and of whom he always kept 
to the windward, is one of Smollett's most masterly 
sketches. Peregrine Pickle is no great favourite of mine, 
and Launcelot Greaves was not worthy of the genius of the 
author. 

Humphry Clinker and Count Fathom are both equally 
admirable in their way. Perhaps the former is the most 
pleasant gossiping novel that ever was written ; that which 
gives the most pleasure with the least effort to the reader. 
It is quite as amusing as going the journey could have been ; 
and we have just as good an idea of what happened on the 
road, as if we had been of the party. Humphry Clinker 
himself is exquisite ; and his sweetheart, Winifred Jenkins, 
not much behind him. Matthew Bramble, though not alto- 
gether original, is excellently supported, and seems to have 
been the prototype of Sir Anthony Absolute in the Rivals. 
But Lismahago is the flower of the flock. His tenaciousness 
in argument is not so delightful as the relaxation of his 
logical severity, when he finds his fortune mellowing in the 
wintry smiles of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. This is the best- 
preserved and most severe of all Smollett's characters. The 
resemblance to Don Quixote is only just enough to make it 



I 



The English Novelists 165 

interesting to the critical reader, without giving offence to 
any body else. The indecency and filth in this novel are 
what must be allowed to all Smollett's writings. — The sub- 
ject and characters in Count Fathom are, in general, exceed- 
ingly disgusting : the story is also spun out to a degree of 
tediousness in the serious and sentimental parts; but there 
is more power of writing occasionally shewn in it than in 
any of his works. I need only refer to the fine and bitter 
irony of the Count's address to the country of his ancestors 
on his landing in England ; to the robber-scene in the forest, 
which has never been surpassed ; to the Parisian swindler 
who personates a raw English country squire (Western is 
tame in the comparison) ; and to the story of the seduction 
in the west of England. It would be difficult to point out, 
in any author, passages written with more force and mas- 
tery than these. 

It is not a very difficult undertaking to class Fielding or 
Smollett; — the one as an observer of the characters of 
human life, the other as a describer of its various eccen- 
tricities. But it is by no means so easy to dispose of 
Richardson, who was neither an observer of the one, nor 
a describer of the other; but who seemed to spin his ma- 
terials entirely out of his own brain, as if there had been 
nothing existing in the world beyond the little room in 
which he sat writing. There is an artificial reality about 
his works, which is no where else to be met with. They 
have the romantic air of a pure fiction, with the literal 
minuteness of a common diary. The author had the strong- 
est matter-of-fact imagination that ever existed, and wrote 
the oddest mixture of poetry and prose. He does not 
appear to have taken advantage of anything in actual nature, 
from one end of his works to the other ; and yet, throughout 
all his works, voluminous as they are — (and this, to be sure, 
is one reason why they are so,) — he sets about describing 



i66 English Literature 

every object and transaction, as if the whole had been 
given in on evidence by an eye-w^itness. This kind of high 
finishing from imagination is an anomaly in the history 
of human genius; and, certainly, nothing so fine v^as ever 
produced by the same accumulation of minute parts. There 
is not the least distraction, the least forgetfulness of the 
end : every circumstance is made to tell. I cannot agree 
that this exactness of detail produces heaviness ; on the 
contrary, it gives an appearance of truth, and a positive 
interest to the story; and we listen with the same attention 
as we should to the particulars of a confidential communica- 
tion. I at one time used to think some parts of Sir Charles 
Grandison rather trifling and tedious, especially the long 
description of Miss Harriet Byron's wedding-clothes, till I 
was told of two young ladies who had severally copied out 
the whole of that very description for their own private 
gratification. After that, I could not blame the author. 

The effect of reading this work is like an increase of 
kindred. You find yourself all of a sudden introduced into 
the midst of a large family, with aunts and cousins to the 
third and fourth generation, and grandmothers both by the 
father's and mother's side; — and a very odd set of people 
they are, but people whose real existence and personal 
identity you can no more dispute than your own senses, 
for you see and hear all that they do or say. What is still 
more extraordinary, all this extreme elaborateness in work- 
ing out the story, seems to have cost the author nothing; 
for it is said, that the published works are mere abridg- 
ments. I have heard (though this I suspect must be a 
pleasant exaggeration) that Sir Charles Grandison was 
originally written in eight and twenty volumes. 

Pamela is the first of Richardson's productions, and the 
very child of his brain. Taking the general idea of the 
character of a modest and beautiful country girl, and of 



The English Novelists 167 

the ordinary situation in which she is placed, he makes out 
all the rest, even to the smallest circumstance, by the mere 
force of a reasoning imagination. It would seem as if 
a step lost, would be as fatal here as in a mathematical 
demonstration. The development of the character is the 
most simple, and comes the nearest to nature that it can 
do, without being the same thing. The interest of the story 
increases with the dawn of understanding and reflection in 
the heroine: her sentiments gradually expand themselves, 
like opening flowers. She writes better every time, and 
acquires a confidence in herself, just as a girl would do, 
writing such letters in such circumstances; and yet it is 
certain that no girl would write such letters in such circum- 
stances. What I mean is this: — Richardson's nature is 
always the nature of sentiment and reflection, not of impulse 
or situation. He furnishes his characters, on every occa- 
sion, with the presence of mind of the author. He makes 
them act, not as they would from the impulse of the mo- 
ment, but as they might upon reflection, and upon a careful 
review of every motive and circumstance in their situation. 
They regularly sit down to write letters: and if the business 
of life consisted in letter-writing, and was carried on by 
the post (like a Spanish game at chess), human nature 
would be what Richardson represents it. All actual objects 
and feelings are blunted and deadened by being presented 
through a medium which may be true to reason, but is 
false in nature. He confounds his own point of view with 
that of the immediate actors in the scene ; and hence pre- 
sents you with a conventional and factitious nature, instead 
of that which is real. Dr. Johnson seems to have preferred 
this truth of reflection to the truth of nature, when he said 
that there was more knowledge of the human heart in a 
page of Richardson, than in all Fielding. Fielding, how- 
ever, saw more of the practical results, and understood 



1 68 English Literature 

the principles as well ; but he had not the same power of 
speculating upon their possible results, and combining them 
in certain ideal forms of passion and imagination, which 
was Richardson's real excellence. 

It must be observed, however, that it is this mutual 
good understanding, and comparing of notes between the 
author and the persons he describes ; his infinite circumspec- 
tion^ his exact process of ratiocination and calculation, 
which gives such an appearance of coldness and formality 
to most of his characters, — which makes prudes of his 
women, and coxcombs of his men. Every thing is too con- 
scious in his works. Every thing is distinctly brought 
home to the mind of the actors in the scene, which is a 
fault undoubtedly: but then it must be confessed, every 
thing is brought home in its full force to the mind of the 
reader also ; and we feel the same interest in the story as if 
it were our own. Can anything be more beautiful or more 
affecting than Pamela's reproaches to her " lumpish heart," 
when she is sent away from her master's at her own re- 
quest; its lightness, when she is sent for back; the joy 
which the conviction of the sincerity of his love diffuses in 
her heart, like the coming on of spring; the artifice of the 
stuff gown ; the meeting with Lady Davers after her mar- 
riage ; and the trial-scene with her husband ? Who ever 
remained insensible to the passion of Lady Clementina, 
except Sir Charles Grandison himself, who was the object 
of it? Clarissa is, however, his masterpiece, if we except 
Lovelace. If she is fine in herself, she is still finer in his 
account of her. With that foil, her purity is dazzHng indeed : 
and she who could triumph by her virtue, and the force 
of her love, over the regality of Lovelace's mind, his wit, 
his person, his accomplishments, and his spirit, conquers 
all hearts. I should suppose that never sympathy more 
deep or sincere was excited than by the heroine of Richard- 



The English Novelists 169 

son's romance, except by the calamities of real life. The 
links in this wonderful chain of interest are not more finely 
wrought, than their whole weight is overwhelming and 
irresistible. Who can forget the exquisite gradations of 
her long dying-scene, or the closing of the coffin-lid, when 
Miss Howe comes to take her last leave of her friend ; or 
the heart-breaking reflection that Clarissa makes on what 
was to have been her wedding-day? Well does a certain 
writer exclaim — 

'* Books are a real world, both pure and good. 
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, 
Our pastime and our happiness may grow ! " 

Richardson's wit was unlike that of any other writer — his 
humour was so too. Both were the effect of intense activity 
of mind — laboured, and yet completely effectual. I might 
refer to Lovelace's reception and description of Hickman, 
when he calls out Death in his ear, as the name of the person 
with whom Clarissa had fallen in love ; and to the scene at 
the glove-shop. What can be more magnificent than his 
enumeration of his companions — " Belton, so pert and so 
pimply — Tourville, so fair and so foppish ! " etc. In casuis- 
try this author is quite at home; and, with a boldness 
greater even than his puritanical severity, has exhausted 
every topic on virtue and vice. There is another peculiarity 
in Richardson, not perhaps so uncommon, which is, his 
systematically preferring his most insipid characters to his 
finest, though both were equally his own invention, and he 
must be supposed to have understood something of their 
qualities. Thus he preferred the little, selfish, affected, 
insignificant Miss Byron, to the divine Clementina ; and 
again, Sir Charles Grandison, to the nobler Lovelace. I 
have nothing to say in favour of Lovelace's morality; but 
Sir Charles is the prince of coxcombs, — whose eye was 



I/O English Literature 

never once taken from his own person, and his own virtues ; 
and there is nothing which excites so httle sympathy as 
this excessive egotism. 

It remains to speak of Sterne; and I shall do it in few 
words. There is more of mannerism and affectation in 
him, and a more immediate reference to preceding authors ; 
but his excellences, where he is excellent, are of the first 
order. His characters are intellectual and inventive, like 
Richardson's; but totally opposite in the execution. The 
one are made out by continuity, and patient repetition of 
touches : the others, by glancing transitions and graceful 
apposition. His style is equally different from Richard- 
son's : it is at times the most rapid, the most happy, the most 
idomatic of any that is to be found. It is the pure essence 
of English conversational style. His works consist only 
of morceaux — of brilliant passages. I wonder that Gold- 
smith, who ought to have known better, should call him 
"a dull fellow." His wit is poignant, though artificial; 
and his characters (though the groundwork of some of 
them had been laid before) have yet invaluable original 
differences ; and the spirit of the execution, the master- 
strokes constantly thrown into them, are not to be sur- 
passed. It is sufficient to name them; — Yorick, Dr. Slop, 
Mr. Shandy, My Uncle Toby, Trim, Susanna, and the 
Widow Wadman. In these he has contrived to oppose, 
with equal felicity and Originality, two characters, one of 
pure intellect, and the other of pure good nature, in My 
Father and My Uncle Toby. There appears to have been 
in Sterne a vein of dry, sarcastic humour, and of extreme 
tenderness of feeling; the latter sometimes carried to affec- 
tation, as in the tale of Maria, and the apostrophe to the 
recording angel : but at other times pure, and without blem- 
ish. The story of Le Fevre is perhaps the finest in the 
English language. My Father's restlessness, both of body 



The English Novelists ly^i 

and mind, is inimitable. It is the model from which all 
those despicable performances against modern philosophy 
ought to have been copied, if their authors had known any- 
thing of the subject they were writing about. My Uncle 
Toby is one of the finest compliments ever paid to human 
nature. He is the most unoffending of God's creatures ; or, 
as the French express it, un tel petit bon hommel Of his 
bowling-green, his sieges, and his amours, who would say 
or think any thing amiss ! 



IX 

CHARACTER OF MR. BURKE, 1807 * 

The following speech is perhaps the fairest specimen I 
could give of Mr. Burke's various talents as a speaker. 
The subject itself is not the most interesting, nor does it 
admit of that weight and closeness of reasoning which he 
displayed on other occasions. But there is no single speech 
which can convey a satisfactory idea of his powers of 
mind: to do him justice, it would be necessary to quote all 
his works ; the only specimen of Burke is, all that he wrote. 
With respect to most other speakers, a specimen is gen- 
erally enough, or more than enough. When you are ac- 
quainted with their manner, and see what proficiency they 
have made in the mechanical exercise of their profession, 
with what facihty they can borrow a simile, or round a 
period, how dexterously they can argue, and object, and 
rejoin, you are satisfied; there is no other difference in 
their speeches than what arises from the difference of the 
subjects. But this was not the case with Burke. He 
brought his subjects along with him ; he drew his materials 
from himself. The only limits which circumscribed his 
variety were the stores of his own mind. His stock of 
ideas did not consist of a few meagre facts, meagrely stated, 
of half a dozen common-places tortured in a thousand dif- 
ferent ways : but his mine of wealth was a profound under- 
standing, inexhaustible as the human heart, and various as 

* This character was written in a fit of extravagant candour, at 
a time when I thought I could do justice, or more than justice, to 
an enemy, without betraying a cause. 

172 



Character of Mr. Burke 173 

the sources of nature. He therefore enriched every sub- 
ject to which he appHed himself, and new subjects were 
only the occasions of calling forth fresh powers of mind 
w^hich had not been before exerted. It would therefore 
be in vain to look for the proof of his powers in any one 
of his speeches or writings : they all contain some additional 
proof of power. In speaking of Burke, then, I shall speak 
of the whole compass and circuit of his mind — not of that 
small part or section of him which I have been able to give : 
to do otherwise would be Hke the story of the man who 
put the .brick in his pocket, thinking to shew it as the model 
of a house. I have been able to manage pretty well with 
respect to all my other speakers, and curtailed them down 
without remorse. It was easy to reduce them within cer- 
tain Hmits, to fix their spirit, and condense their variety; 
by having a certain quantity given, you might infer all the 
rest ; it was only the same thing over again. But who can 
bind Proteus, or confine the roving flight of genius? 

Burke's writings are better than his speeches, and indeed 
his speeches are writings. But he seemed to feel himself 
more at ease, to have a fuller possession of his faculties in 
addressing the public, than in addressing the House of 
Commons. Burke was raised into public life : and he seems 
to have been prouder of this new dignity than became so 
great a man. For this reason, most of his speeches have 
a sort of parliamentary preamble to them: there is an air 
of affected modesty, and ostentatious trifling in them : he 
seems fond of coqueting with the House of Commons, and 
is perpetually calling the Speaker out to dance a minuet 
with him, before he begins. There is also something like 
an attempt to stimulate the superficial dulness of his hearers 
by exciting their surprise, by running into extravagance : 
and he sometimes demeans himself by condescending to 
what may be considered as bordering too much upon buf- 



174 English Literature 

foonery, for the amusement of the company. Those lines 
of Milton were admirably applied to him by some one — 
"The elephant to make them sport wreathed his proboscis 
lithe." The truth is, that he was out of his place in the 
House of Commons; he was eminently qualified to shine 
as a man of genius, as the instructor of mankind, as the 
brightest luminary of his age: but he had nothing in 
common with that motley crew of knights, citizens, and 
burgesses. He could not be said to be '' native and endued 
unto that element." He was above it; and never appeared 
like himself, but when, forgetful of the idle clamours 
of party, and of the little views of little men, he ap- 
pealed to his country, and the enlightened judgment of 
mankind. 

I am not going to make an idle panegyric on Burke (he 
has no need of it) ; but I cannot help looking upon him as 
the chief boast and ornament of the EngHsh House of 
Commons. What has beeij said of him is, I think, strictly 
true, that '' he was the most eloquent man of his time : 
his wisdom was greater than his eloquence." The only 
public man that in my opinion can be put in any competi- 
tion with him, is Lord Chatham : and he moved in a sphere 
so very remote, that it is almost impossible to compare 
them. But though it would perhaps be difficult to determine 
which of them excelled most in his particular way, there 
is nothing in the world more easy than to point out in 
what their peculiar excellences consisted. They were in 
every respect the reverse of each other. Chatham's elo- 
quence was popular: his wisdom was altogether plain and 
practical. Burke's eloquence was that of the poet; of the 
man of high and unbounded fancy : his wisdom was pro- 
found and contemplative. Chatham's eloquence was cal- 
culated to make men act; Burke's was calculated to make 
them think. Chatham could have roused the fury of a multi- 



Character of Mr. Burke 175 

tude, and wielded their physical energy as he pleased: 
Burke's eloquence carried conviction into the mind of the 
retired and lonely student, opened the recesses of the human 
breast, and lighted up the face of nature around him. Chat- 
ham supplied his hearers with motives to immediate action : 
Burke furnished them with reasons for action which might 
have little effect upon them at the time, but for which they 
would be the wiser and better all their lives after. In re- 
search, in originality, in variety of knowledge, in richness 
of invention, in depth and comprehension of mind, Burke 
had as much the advantage of Lord Chatham as he was 
excelled by him in plain common sense, in strong feeling, 
in steadiness of purpose, in vehemence, in w^armth, in en- 
thusiasm, and energy of mind. Burke was the man of 
genius, of fine sense, and subtle reasoning; Chatham was 
a man of clear understanding^ of strong sense, and violent 
passions. Burke's mind was satisfied with speculation: 
Chatham's was essentially active: it could not rest without 
an object. The power which governed Burke's mind was 
his Imagination ; that which gave its impetus to Chatham's 
was Will. The one was almost the creature of pure intel- 
lect, the other of physical temperament. 

There are two very different ends which a man of genius 
may propose to himself either in writing or speaking, and 
which will accordingly give birth to very different styles. 
He can have but one of these two objects; either to enrich 
or strengthen the mind ; either to furnish us with new ideas, 
to lead the mind into new trains of thought, to which it 
was before unused, and which it was incapable of striking 
out for itself ; or else to collect and embody what we already 
knew, to rivet our old impressions more deeply; to make 
what was before plain still plainer, and to give to that 
which was familiar all the effect of novelty. In the one 
case we receive an accession to the stock of our ideas ; in 



176 English Literature 

the other, an additional degree of life and energy is infused 
into them : our thoughts continue to flow in the same chan- 
nels, but their pulse is quickened and invigorated. I do 
not know how to distinguish these different styles better 
than by calling them severally the inventive and refined, 
or the impressive and vigorous styles. It is only the subject- 
matter of eloquence, however, which is allowed to be remote 
or obscure. The things in themselves may be subtle and 
recondite, but they must be dragged out of their obscurity 
and brought struggling to the light ; they must be rendered 
plain and palpable, (as far as it is in the wit of man to do 
so) or they are no longer eloquence. That which by its 
natural impenetrability, and in spite of every effort, remains 
dark and difficult, which is impervious to every ray, on 
which the imagination can shed no lustre, which can be 
clothed with no beauty, is not a subject for the orator or 
poet. At the same time it cannot be expected that abstract 
truths or profound observations should ever be placed in 
the same strong and dazzling points of view as natural 
objects and mere matters of fact. It is enough if they 
receive a reflex and borrowed lustre, like that Which cheers 
the first dawn of morning, where the effect of surprise 
and novelty gilds every object, and the joy of beholding 
another world gradually emerging out of the gloom of 
night, " a new creation rescued from his reign," fills the 
mind with a sober rapture. Philosophical eloquence is in 
writing what chiaro scuro is in painting ; he would be a fool 
who should object that the colours in the shaded part of 
a picture were not so bright as those on the opposite side; 
the eye of the connoisseur receives an equal delight from 
both, balancing the want of brilliancy and effect with the 
greater delicacy of the tints, and difficulty of the execu- 
tion. In judging of Burke, therefore, we are to consider 
first the style of eloquence which he adopted, and secondly 



Character of Mr. Burke 177 

the effects which he produced with it. If he did not pro- 
duce the same effects on vulgar minds, as some others have 
done, it was not for want of power, but from the turn and 
direction of his mind.* It was because his subjects, his 
ideas, his arguments, were less vulgar. The question is 
not whether he brought certain truths equally home to us, 
but how much nearer he brought them than they were 
before. In my opinion, he united the two extremes of 
refinement and strength in a higher degree than any other 
writer whatever. 

The subtlety of his mind was undoubtedly that which 
rendered Burke a less popular writer and speaker than he 
otherwise would have been. It weakened the impression 
of his observations upon others, but I cannot admit that it 
weakened the observations themselves ; that it took any- 
thing from their real weight and solidity. Coarse minds 
think all that is subtle, futile : that because it is not gross 
and obvious and palpable to the senses, it is therefore light 
and frivolous, and of no importance in the real affairs of 
life ; thus making their own confined understandings the 
measure of truth, and supposing that whatever they do not 
distinctly perceive, is nothing. Seneca, who was not one 
of the vulgar, also says, that subtle truths are those which 
have the least substance in them, and consequently approach 
nearest to nonentity. But for my own part I cannot help 
thinking that the most important truths must be the most 
refined and subtle; for that very reason, that they must 
comprehend a great number of particulars, and instead of 
referring to any distinct or positive fact, must point out 
the combined effects of an extensive chain of causes^ operat- 
ing gradually, remotely, and collectively, and therefore im- 
perceptibly. General principles are not the less true or im- 

* For instance : he produced less effect on the mob that compose 
the English House of Commons than Chatham or Fox, or even Pitt. 



178 English Literature 

portant because from their nature they elude immediate 
observation; they are like the air, which is not the less 
necessary because we neither see nor feel it, or like that 
secret influence which binds the world together, and holds 
the planets in their orbits. The very same persons who 
are the most forward to laugh at all systematic reasoning as 
idle and impertinent, you will the next moment hear ex- 
claiming bitterly against the baleful effects of new-fangled 
systems of philosophy, or gravely descanting on the im- 
mense importance of instilling sound principles of morality 
into the mind. It would not be a bold conjecture, but an 
obvious truism to say,, that all the great changes which have 
been brought about in the moral world, either for the better 
or worse, have been^ introduced not by the bare statement 
of facts, which are things already known, and which must 
always operate nearly in the same manner, but by the de- 
velopment of certain opinions and abstract principles of 
reasoning on life and manners, on the origin of society 
and man's nature in general, which being obscure and uncer- 
tain, vary from time to time, and produce correspondent 
changes in the human mind. They are the wholesome dew 
and rain, or the mildew and pestilence that silently destroy. 
To this principle of generalization all religious creeds, the 
institutions of wise lawgivers, and the systems of philos- 
ophers, owe their influence. 

It has always been with me a test of the sense and 
candour of any one belonging to the opposite party, whether 
he allowed Burke to be a great man. Of all the persons 
of this description that I have ever known, I never met 
with above one or two who would make this concession ; 
whether it was that party feelings ran too high to admit 
of any real candour, or whether it was owing to an essential 
vulgarity in their habits of thinking, they all seemed to be 
of opinion that he was a wild enthusiast, or a hollow 



Character of Mr. Burke 179 

sophist, who was to be answered by bits of facts, by smart 
logic, by shrewd questions, and idle songs. They looked 
upon him as a man of disordered intellects, because he rea- 
soned in a style to which they had not been used and 
which confounded their dim perceptions. If you said that 
though you differed with him in sentiment, yet you thought 
him an admirable reasoner, and a close observer of human 
nature, you were answered with a loud laugh, and some 
hackneyed quotation. " Alas ! Leviathan was not so 
tamed ! " They did not know whom they had to contend 
with. The corner stone, which the builders rejected, became 
the head-corner, though to the Jews a stumbling block, and 
to the Greeks foolishness ; for indeed I cannot discover that 
he was much better understood by those of his own party, 
if we may judge from the Httle affinity there is between his 
mode of reasoning and theirs. — The simple clue to all his 
reasonings on politics is, I think, as follows. He did not 
agree with some writers, that that mode of government is 
necessarily the best which is the cheapest. He saw in the 
construction of society other principles at work, and other 
capacities of fulfilling the desires, and perfecting the nature 
of man, besides those of securing the equal enjoyment of 
the means of animal life, and doing this at as little expense 
as possible. He thought that the wants and happiness of 
men were not to be provided for, as we provide for those 
of a herd of cattle, merely by attending to their physical 
necessities. He thought more nobly of his fellows. He 
knew that man had affections and passions and powers of 
imagination, as well as hunger and thirst and the sense of 
heat and cold. He took his idea of political society from 
the pattern of private life, wishing, as he himself expresses 
it, to incorporate the domestic charities with the orders of 
the state, and to blend them together. He strove to establish 
an analogy between the compact that binds together the 



i8o English Literature 

community at large, and that which binds together the 
several families that compose it. He knew that the rules 
that form the basis of private morality are not founded in 
reason, that is, in the abstract properties of those things 
which are the subjects of them, but in the nature of man, 
and his capacity of being affected by certain things from 
habit, from imagination, and sentiment, as well as from 
reason. 

Thus, the reason why a man ought to be attached to his 
wife and children is not, surely, that they are better than 
others, (for in this case every one else ought to be of the 
same opinion) but because he must be chiefly interested in 
those things which are nearest to him, and with which he 
is best acquainted, since his understanding cannot reach 
equally to every thing; because he must be most attached 
to those objects which he has known the longest, and which 
by their situation have actually affected him the most, not 
those which in themselves are the most affecting, whether 
they have ever made any impression on him or no; that is, 
because he is by his nature the creature of habit and feel- 
ing, and because it is reasonable that he should act in con- 
formity to his nature. Burke was so far right in saying that 
it is no objection to an institution that it is founded in 
prejudice, but the contrary, if that prejudice is natural and 
right; that is, if it arises from those circumstances which 
are properly subjects of feeling and association, not from 
any defect or perversion of the understanding in those 
things which fall strictly under its jurisdiction. On this 
profound maxim he took his stand. Thus he contended, 
that the prejudice in favour of nobility was natural and 
proper, and fit to be encouraged by the positive institu- 
tions of society ; not on account of the real or personal 
merit of the individuals, but because such an institution has 
a tendency to enlarge and raise the mind, to keep alive the 



Character of Mr. Burke i8i 

memory of past greatness, to connect the different ages of 
the world together, to carry back the imagination over a 
long tract of time, and feed it with the contemplation of 
remote events : because it is natural to think highly of that 
which inspires us with high thoughts, which has been con- 
nected for many generations with splendour, and affluence, 
and dignity, and power, and privilege. He also conceived, 
that by transferring the respect from the person to the 
thing, and thus rendering it steady and permanent, the 
mind would be habitually formed to sentiments of defer- 
ence, attachment, and fealty, to whatever else demanded 
its respect: that it would be led to fix its view on what 
was elevated and lofty, and be weaned from that low 
and narrow jealousy which never willingly or heartily ad- 
mits of any superiority in others, and is glad of every 
opportunity to bring down all excellence to a level with its 
own miserable standard. Nobility did not therefore exist 
to the prejudice of the other orders of the state, but by, 
and for them. The inequality of the different orders of 
society did not destroy the unity and harmony of the whole. 
The health and well-being of the moral world was to be 
promoted by the same means as the beauty of the natural 
world; by contrast, by change, by light and shade, by 
variety of parts, by order and proportion. To think of 
reducing all mankind to the same insipid level, seemed to 
him the same absurdity as to destroy the inequalities of 
surface in a country, for the benefit of agriculture and 
commerce. In short, he believed that the interests of men 
in society should be consulted, and their several stations 
and employments assigned, with a view to their nature, 
not as physical, but as moral beings, so as to nourish their 
hopes, to lift their imagination, to enliven their fancy, to 
rouse their activity, to strengthen their virtue, and to fur- 
nish the greatest number of objects of pursuit and means 



i82 ' English Literature 

of enjoyment to beings constituted as man is, consistently 
with the order and stabiHty of the whole. 

The same reasoning might be extended farther. I do 
not say that his arguments are conclusive ; but they are 
profound and true, as far as they go. There may be dis- 
advantages and abuses necessarily interwoven with his 
scheme, or opposite advantages of infinitely greater value, 
to be derived from another order of things and state of 
society. This however does not invahdate either the truth 
or importance of Burke's reasoning ; since the advantages he 
points out as connected with the mixed form of government 
are really and necessarily inherent in it : since they are 
compatible in the same degree with no other; since the 
principle itself on which he rests his argument (whatever 
we may think of the application) is of the utmost weight 
and moment; and since on whichever side the truth lies, 
it is impossible to make a fair decision without having 
the opposite side of the question clearly and fully stated 
to us. This Burke has done in a masterly manner. He 
presents to you one view or face of society. Let him, 
who thinks he can, give the reverse side with equal force, 
beauty, and clearness. It is said, I know, that truth is one; 
but to this I cannot subscribe, for it appears to me that 
truth is many. There are as many truths as there are things 
and causes of action and contradictory principles at work 
in society. In making up the account of good and evil, 
indeed, the final result must be one way or the other; but 
the particulars on which that result depends are infinite 
and various. 

It will be seen from what I have said, that I am very 
far from agreeing with those who think that Burke was 
a man without understanding, and a merely florid writer. 
There are two causes which have given rise to this calumny ; 
namely, that narrowness of mind which leads men to sup- 



Character of Mr. Burke 183 

pose that the truth lies entirely on the side of their own 
opinions, and that whatever does not make for them is 
absurd and irrational; secondly, a trick we have of con- 
founding reason with judgment, and supposing that it is 
merely the province of the understanding to pronounce 
sentence, and not to give in evidence, or argue the case ; in 
short, that it is a passive, not an active faculty. Thus there 
are persons who never run into any extravagance, because 
they are so buttressed up with the opinions of others on 
all sides, that they cannot lean much to one side or the 
other; they are so little moved with any kind of reasoning, 
that they remain at an equal distance from every extreme, 
and are never very far from the truth, because the slowness 
of their faculties will not suffer them to make much prog- 
ress in error. These are persons of great judgment. The 
scales of the mind are pretty sure to remain even, when 
there is nothing in them. In this sense of the word, Burke 
must be allowed to have wanted judgment, by all those who 
think that he was wrong in his conclusions. The accusa- 
tion of want of judgment, in fact, only means that you 
yourself are of a different opinion. But if in arriving at 
one error he discovered a hundred truths, I should con- 
sider myself a hundred times more indebted to him than 
if, stumbling on that which I consider as the right side of 
the question, he had committed a hundred absurdities in 
striving to establish his point. I speak of him now merely 
as an author, or as far as I and other readers are con- 
cerned with him; at the same time, I should not differ 
from any one who may be disposed to contend that the 
consequences of his writings as instruments of political 
power have been tremendous, fatal, such as no exertion 
of wit or knowledge or genius can ever counteract or 
atone for. 

Burke also gave a hold to his antagonists by mixing up 



184 English Literature 

sentiment and imagery with his reasoning; so that being 
unused to such a sight in the region of politics, they were 
deceived, and could not discern the fruit from the flowers. 
Gravity is the cloke of wisdom ; and those who have noth- 
ing else think it an insult to affect the one without the 
other, because it destroys the only foundation on which 
their pretensions are built. The easiest part of reason is 
dulness; the generality of the world are therefore con- 
cerned in discouraging any example of unnecessary bril- 
liancy that might tend to show that the two things do not 
always go together. Burke in some measure dissolved the 
spell. It was discovered, that his gold was not the less 
valuable for being wrought into elegant shapes, and richly 
embossed with curious figures ; that the solidity of a build- 
ing is not destroyed by adding to it beauty and ornament; 
and that the strength of a man's understanding is not al- 
ways to be estimated in exact proportion to his want of 
imagination. His understanding was not the less real, be- 
cause it was not the only faculty he possessed. He justified 
the description of the poet, — 

" How charming is divine philosophy ! 
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute ! " 

Those who object to this union of grace and beauty with 
reason, are in fact weak-sighted people, who cannot dis- 
tinguish the noble and majestic form of Truth from that 
of her sister Folly, if they are dressed both alike ! But 
there is always a difference even in the adventitious orna- 
ments they wear, which is sufficient to distinguish them. 

Burke was so far from being a gaudy or flowery writer, 
that he was one of the severest writers we have. His 
words are the most like things ; his style is the most strictly 
suited to the subject. He unites every extreme and every 



Character of Mr. Burke 185 

variety of composition ; the lowest and the meanest words 
and descriptions with the highest. He exults in the display 
of power, in shewing the extent, the force, and intensity 
of his ideas; he is led on by the mere impulse and vehe- 
mence of his fancy, not by the affectation of dazzling his 
readers by gaudy conceits or pompous images. He was 
completely carried away by his subject. He had no other 
object but to produce the strongest impression on his 
reader, by giving the truest, the most characteristic, the 
fullest, and most forcible description of things, trusting to 
the power of his own mind to mould them into grace and 
beauty. He did not produce a splendid effect by setting 
fire to the light vapours that float in the regions of fancy, 
as the chemists make fine colours with phosphorus, but 
by the eagerness of his blows struck fire from the flint, 
and melted the hardest substances in the furnace of his 
imagination. The wheels of his imagination did not catch 
fire from the rottenness of the materials, but from the 
rapidity of their motion. One would suppose, to hear 
people talk of Burke, that his style was such as would have 
suited the " Lady's Magazine " ; soft, smooth, showy, tender, 
insipid, full of fine words, without any meaning. The 
essence of the gaudy or glittering style consists in pro- 
ducing a momentary effect by fine words and images 
brought together, without order or connexion. Burke most 
frequently produced an effect by the remoteness and novelty 
of his combinations, by the force of contrast, by the striking 
manner in which the most opposite and unpromising ma- 
terials were harmoniously blended together; not by laying 
his hands on all the fine things he could think of, but by 
bringing together those things which he knew would blaze 
out into glorious light by their collision. The florid style 
is a mixture of affectation and common-place. Burke's 
was an union of untameable vigour and originality. 



1 86 English Literature 

Burke was not a verbose writer. If he sometimes multi- 
plies Avords, it is not for want of ideas, but because there 
are no words that fully express his ideas, and he tries to 
do it as well as he can by different ones. He had nothing 
of the set or formal style, the measured cadence, and stately 
phraseology of Johnson, and most of our modern writers. 
This style, which is what we understand by the artificial, is 
all in one key. It selects a certain set of words to represent 
all ideas whatever, as the most dignified and elegant, and 
excludes all others as low and vulgar. The words are not 
fitted to the things, but the things to the words. Every 
thing is seen through a false medium. It is putting a mask 
on the face of nature, which may indeed hide some specks 
and blemishes, but takes away all beauty, delicacy, and 
variety. It destroys all dignity or elevation, because noth- 
ing can be raised where all is on a level, and completely 
destroys all force, expression, truth, and character, by arbi- 
trarily confounding the differences of things, and reducing 
every thing to the same insipid standard. To suppose that 
this stiff uniformity can add any thing to real grace or dig- 
nity, is like supposing that the human body in order to 
be perfectly graceful, should never deviate from its upright 
posture. Another mischief of this method is, that it con- 
founds all ranks in literature. Where there is no room for 
variety, no discrimination, no nicety to be shewn in match- 
ing the idea with its proper word, there can be no room 
for taste or elegance. A man must easily learn the art 
of writing, when every sentence is to be cast in the same 
mould: where he is only allowed the use of one word, he 
cannot choose wrong, nor will he be in much danger of 
making himself ridiculous by affectation or false glitter, 
when, whatever subject he treats of, he must treat of it 
in the same way. This indeed is to wear golden chains 
for the sake of ornament. 



Character of Mr. Burke 187 

Burke was altogether free from the pedantry which I 
have here endeavoured to expose. His style was as original, 
as expressive, as rich and varied, as it was possible; his 
combinations were as exquisite, as playful, as happy, as un- 
expected, as bold and daring, as his fancy. If any thing, he 
ran into the opposite extreme of too great an inequality, 
if truth and nature could ever be carried to an extreme. 

Those who are best acquainted with the writings and 
speeches of Burke will not think the praise I have here 
bestowed on them exaggerated. Some proof will be found 
of this in the following extracts. But the full proof must 
be sought in his works at large, and particularly in the 
" Thoughts on the Discontents " ; in his " Reflections on the 
French Revolution " ; in his '' Letter to the Duke of Bed- 
ford " ; and in the " Regicide Peace." The two last of 
these are perhaps the most remarkable of all his writings, 
from the contrast they afford to each other. The one is 
the most dehghtful exhibition of wild and brilliant fancy, 
that is to be found in English prose, but it is too much 
like a beautiful picture painted upon gauze ; it wants some- 
thing to support it : the other is without ornament, but it 
has all the solidity, the weight, the gravity of a judicial 
record. It seems to have been written with a certain con- 
straint upon himself, and to shew those who said he could 
not reason^ that his arguments might be stripped of their 
ornaments without losing any thing of their force. It is 
certainly, of all his works, that in which he has shewn 
most power of logical deduction, and the only one in which 
he has made any important use of facts. In general he 
certainly paid little attention to them : they were the play- 
things of his mind. He saw them as he pleased, not as 
they were ; with the eye of the philosopher or the poet, 
regarding them only in their general principle, or as they 
might serve to decorate his subject. This is the natural 



1 88 English Literature 

consequence of much imagination : things that are probable 
are elevated into the rank of realities. To those who can 
reason on the essences of things, or who can invent accord- 
ing to nature, the experimental proof is of little value. This 
was the case with Burke. In the present instance, how- 
ever, he seems to have forced his mind into the service of 
facts : and he succeeded completely. His comparison be- 
tween our connection with France or Algiers, and his 
account of the conduct of the war, are as clear, as con- 
vincing, as forcible examples of this kind of reasoning, as 
are any where to be met with. Indeed I do not think there 
is any thing in Fox (whose mind was purely historical) 
or in Chatham, (who attended to feelings more than facts) 
that will bear a comparison with them. 

Burke has been compared to Cicero — I do not know for 
what reason. Their excellences are as different, and indeed 
as opposite, as they well can be. Burke had not the polished 
elegance, the glossy neatness, the artful regularity, the ex- 
quisite modulation of Cicero: he had a thousand times 
more richness and originality of mind, more strength and 
pomp of diction. 

It has been well observed, that the ancients had no word 
that properly expresses what we mean by the word genius. 
They perhaps had not the thing. Their minds appear to 
have been too exact, too retentive, too minute and subtle, 
too sensible to the external differences of things, too passive 
under their impressions, to admit of those bold and rapid 
combinations, those lofty flights of fancy, which, glancing 
from heaven to earth, unite the most opposite extremes, 
and draw the happiest illustrations from things the most 
remote. Their ideas were kept too confined and distinct 
by the material form or vehicle in which they were con- 
veyed, to unite cordially together, or be melted down in 
the imagination. Their metaphors are taken from things 



Character of Mr. Burke. 189 

of the same class, not from things of different classes; the 
general analogy, not the individual feeling, directs them 
in their choice. Hence, as Dr. Johnson observed, their 
similes are either repetitions of the same idea, or so obvious 
and general as not to lend any additional force to it; as 
when a huntress is compared to Diana, or a warrior rushing 
into battle to a lion rushing on his prey. Their forte was 
exquisite art and perfect imitation. Witness their statues 
and other things of the same kind. But they had not that 
high and enthusiastic fancy which some of our own writers 
have shewn. For the proof of this, let any one compare 
Milton and Shakspeare with Homer and Sophocles, or 
Burke with Cicero. 

It may be asked whether Burke was a poet. He was so 
only in the general vividness of his fancy, and in richness 
of invention. There may be poetical passages in his works, 
but I certainly think that his writings in general are quite 
distinct from poetry; and that for the reason before given, 
namely, that the subject-matter of them is not poetical. 
The finest part of them are illustrations or personifications 
of dry abstract ideas ; "^ and the union between the idea 
and the illustration is not of that perfect and pleasing kind 
as to constitute poetry, or indeed to be admissible, but 
for the effect intended to be produced by it; that is, by 
every means in our power to give animation and attraction 
to subjects in themselves barren of ornament, but which 
at the same time are pregnant with the most important 
consequences, and in which the understanding and the pas- 
sions are equally interested. 

I have heard it remarked by a person, to whose opinion 
I would sooner submit than to a general council of critics, 
that the sound of Burke's prose is not musical ; that it 

* As in the comparison of the British Constitution to the " proud 
keep of Windsor," etc., the most splendid passage in his works. 



I9Q English Literature 

wants cadence ; and that instead of being so lavish of his 
imagery as is generally supposed, he seemed to him to be 
rather parsimonious in the use of it, always expanding and 
making the most of his ideas. This may be true if we 
compare him with some of our poets, or perhaps with some 
of our early prose writers, but not if we compare him with 
any of our political writers or parliamentary speakers. 
There are some very fine things of Lord Bolingbroke's on 
the same subjects, but not equal to Burke's. As for Junius, 
he is at the head of his class ; but that class is not the 
highest. He has been said to have more dignity than 
Burke. Yes — if the stalk of a giant is less dignified than 
the strut of a petit-maifre. I do not mean to speak dis- 
respectfully of Junius, but grandeur is not the character 
of his composition ; and if it is not to be found in Burke, 
it is to be found nowhere. 



X 

MR. WORDSWORTH 

Mr. Wordsworth's genius is a pure emanation of the 
Spirit of the Age. Had he lived in any other period of 
the world, he would never have been heard of. As it "is, 
he has some difficulty to contend with the hebetude of his 
intellect, and the meanness of his subject. With him 
" lowliness is young ambition's ladder ; " but he finds it a 
toil to climb in this way the steep of Fame. His homely 
Muse can hardly raise her wing from the ground, nor spread 
her hidden glories to the sun. He has " no figures nor no 
fantasies, which busy passion draws in the brains of men : " 
neither the gorgeous machinery of mythologic lore, nor the 
splendid colours of poetic diction. His style is vernacular: 
he delivers household truths. He sees nothing loftier than 
human hopes ; nothing deeper than the human heart. This 
he probes, this he tampers with, this he poises, with all its 
incalculable weight of thought and feeling, in his hands, 
and at the same time calms the throbbing pulses of his 
own heart, by keeping his eye ever fixed on the face of 
nature. If he can make the life-blood flow from the 
wounded breast, this is the living colouring with which he 
paints his verse : if he can assuage the pain or close up the 
wound with the balm of solitary musing, or the healing 
power of plants and herbs and " skyey influences," this is 
the sole triumph of his art. He takes the simplest elements 
of nature and of the human mind, the mere abstract con- 
ditions inseparable from our being, and tries to compound 
a new system of poetry from them; and has perhaps suc- 

191 



192 English Literature 

ceeded as well as any one could. '' Nihil hiimani a me 
alienum . puto " — is the motto of his works. He thinks 
nothing low or indifferent of which this can be affirmed: 
every thing that professes to be more than this, that is 
not an absolute essence of truth and feeling, he holds to be 
vitiated, false, and spurious. In a word, his poetry is 
founded on setting up an opposition (and pushing it to the 
utmost length) between the natural and the artificial; be- 
tween the spirit of humanity, and the spirit of fashion and 
of the world ! 

It is one of the innovations of the time. It partakes of, 
and is carried along with, the revolutionary movement of 
our age : the political changes of the day were the model 
on which he formed and conducted his poetical experi- 
ments. His Muse (it cannot be denied, and without this we 
cannot explain its character at all) is a levelling one. It 
proceeds on a principle of equality, and strives to reduce 
all things to the same standard. It is distinguished by a 
proud humility. It relies upon its own resources, and dis- 
dains external show and relief. It takes the commonest 
events and objects, as a test to prove that nature is always 
interesting from its inherent truth and beauty, without any 
of the ornaments of dress or pomp of circumstances to set 
it off. Hence the unaccountable mixture of seeming sim- 
plicity and real abstruseness in the Lyrical Ballads. Fools 
have laughed at, wise men scarcely understand them. He 
takes a subject or a story merely as pegs or loops to hang 
thought and feeling on; the incidents are trifling, in pro- 
portion to his contempt for imposing appearances ; the re- 
flections are profound, according to the gravity and aspiring 
pretensions of his mind. 

His popular, inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of all 
the trappings of verse, of all the high places of poetry: 
" the cloud-capt towers, the solemn temples, the gorgeous 



Mr. Wordsworth 193 

palaces," are swept to the ground, and " like the baseless 
fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind." All the 
traditions of learning, all the superstitions of age, are 
obliterated and effaced. We begin dc novo, on a tabula 
rasa of poetry. The purple pall, the nodding plume of 
tragedy, are exploded as mere pantomime and trick, to 
return to the simplicity of truth and nature. Kings, queens, 
priests, nobles, the altar and the throne, the distinctions 
of rank, birth, wealth, power, " the judge's robe, the mar- 
shal's truncheon, the ceremony that to great ones 'longs," 
are not to be found here. The author tramples on the 
pride of art with greater pride. The Ode and Epode, the 
Strophe and the Antistrophe, he laughs to scorn. The 
harp of Homer, the trump of Pindar and of Alcaeus are still. 
The decencies of costume, the decorations of vanity are 
stripped off without mercy as barbarous, idle, and Gothic. 
The jewels in the crisped hair, the diadem on the polished 
brow are thought meretricious, theatrical, vulgar ; and 
nothing contents his fastidious taste beyond a simple gar- 
land of flowers. Neither does he avail himself of the advan- 
tages which nature or accident holds out to him. He 
chooses to have his subject a foil to his invention, to owe 
nothing but to himself. He gathers manna in the A\ilder- 
ness, he strikes the barren rock for the gushing moisture. 
He elevates the mean by the strength of his own aspira- 
tions ; he clothes the naked with beauty and grandeur from 
the stores of his own recollections. No cypress grove loads 
his verse with funeral pomp: but his imagination lends "a 
sense of joy 

" To the bare trees and mountains bare, 
And grass in the green field." 

No storm, no shipwreck startles us by its horrors: but the 
rainbow lifts its head in the cloud, and the breeze sighs 



194 English Literature 

through the withered fern. No sad vicissitude of fate, nj 
overwhelming catastrophe in nature deforms his page : Lut 
the dewdrop ghtters on the bending flower, the tear collects 
in the glistening eye. 

" Beneath the hills, along the flowery vales, 
The generations are prepared ; the pangs, 
The internal pangs are ready; the dread strife 
Of poor humanity's afflicted will. 
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." 

As the lark ascends from its low bed on fluttering wing, 
and salutes the morning skies; so Mr. Wordsworth's un- 
pretending Muse, in russet guise, scales the summits of 
reflection, while it makes the round earth its footstool, and 
its home! 

Possibly a good deal of this may be regarded as the effect 
of disappointed views and an inverted ambition. Prevented 
by native pride and indolence from climbing the ascent of 
learning or greatness, taught by political opinions to say 
to the vain pomp and glory of the world, " I hate ye," see- 
ing the path of classical and artificial poetry blocked up 
by the cumbrous ornaments of style and turgid common- 
places, so that nothing more could be achieved in that 
direction but by the most ridiculous bombast or the tamest 
servility; he has turned back partly from the bias of his 
mind, partly perhaps from a judicious policy — has struck 
into the sequestered vale of humble life, sought out the 
Muse among sheep-cotes and hamlets and the peasant's 
mountain-haunts, has discarded all the tinsel pageantry of 
verse, and endeavoured (not in vain) to aggrandise the 
trivial and add the charm of novelty to the familiar. No 
one has shown the same imagination in raising trifles into 
importance : no one has displayed the same pathos in treat- 
ing of the simplest feelings of the heart. Reserved, yet 
haughty, having no unruly or violent passions, (or those 



Mr. Wordsworth 195 

passions having been early suppressed,) Mr. Wordsworth 
has passed his Ufe in soUtary musing, or in daily converse 
with the face of nature. He exempHfies in an eminent 
degree the power of association; for his poetry has no 
other source or character. He has dwelt among pastoral 
scenes, till each object has become connected with a thou- 
sand feelings, a link in the chain of thought, a fibre of his 
own heart. Every one is by habit and familiarity strongly 
attached to the place of his birth, or to objects that recall 
the most pleasing and eventful circumstances of his life. 
But to the author of the Lyrical Ballads, nature is a kind 
of home ; and He may be said to take a personal interest in 
the universe. There is no image so insignificant that it 
has not in some mood or other found the way into his 
heart : no sound that does not awaken the memory of 
other years — 

" To him the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

The daisy looks up to him with sparkling eye as an old 
acquaintance : the cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early 
youth not to be expressed : a linnet's nest startles him with 
boyish delight : an old withered thorn is weighed down 
with a heap of recollections : a grey cloak, seen on some 
wild moor, torn by the wind, or drenched in the rain, 
afterwards becomes an object of imagination to him: even 
the lichens on the rock have a life and being in his thoughts. 
He has described all these objects in a way and with an 
intensity of feeling that no one else had done before him, 
and has given a new view or aspect of nature. He is in 
this sense the most original poet now living, and the one 
whose writings could the least be spared : for they have no 
substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read them, the 
learned, who see all things through books, do not under- 



196 English Literature 

stand them, the great despise, the fashionable may ridicule 
them: but the author has created himself an interest in 
the heart of the retired and lonely student of nature, which 
can never die. Persons of this class will still continue to 
feel what he has felt : he has expressed what they might in 
vain wish to express, except with glistening eye and faulter- 
ing tongue ! There is a lofty philosophic tone, a thoughtful 
humanity, infused into his pastoral vein. Remote from 
the passions and events of the great world, he has com- 
municated interest and dignity to the primal movements 
of the heart of man, and ingrafted his own conscious reflec- 
tions on the casual thoughts of hinds and shepherds. 
Nursed amidst the grandeur of mountain scenery; he has 
stooped to have a nearer view of the daisy under his feet, 
or plucked a branch of white-thorn from the spray : but in 
describing it, his mind seems imbued with the majesty and 
solemnity of the objects around him — the tall rock lifts 
its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract roars in 
the sound of his verse ; and in its dim and mysterious mean- 
ing, the mists seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, 
and the forked Skiddaw hovers in the distance. There is 
little mention of mountainous scenery in Mr. Wordsworth's 
poetry ; but by internal evidence one might be almost sure 
that it is written in a mountainous country, from its bare- 
ness, its simplicity, its loftiness, and its depth ! 

His later philosophic productions have a somewhat dif- 
ferent character. They are a departure from, a dereliction 
of his first principles. They are classical and courtly. They 
are polished in style, without being gaudy ; dignified in 
subject, without affectation. They seem to have been com- 
posed not in a cottage at Grasmere, but among the half- 
inspired groves and stately recollections of Cole-Orton. 
We might allude in particular, for examples of what we 
mean, to the lines on a Picture by Claude Lorraine, and to 



Mr. Wordsworth 197 

the exquisite poem, entitled Laodamia. The last of these 
breathes the pure spirit of the finest fragments of antiquity 
— the sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty and 
the languor of death — 

" Calm contemplation and majestic pains." 

Its glossy brilliancy arises from the perfection of the finish- 
ing, like that of careful sculpture, not from gaudy colour- 
ing — the texture of the thoughts has the smoothness and 
solidity of marble. It is a poem that might be read aloud 
in Elysium, and the spirits of departed heroes and sages 
would gather round to listen to it! Mr. Wordsworth's 
philosophic poetry, with a less glowing aspect and less 
tumult in the veins than Lord Byron's on similar occasions, 
bends a calmer and keener eye on mortality ; the impression, 
if less vivid, is more pleasing and permanent; and we 
confess it (perhaps it is a want of taste and proper feeling) 
that there are lines and poems of our author's, that we 
think of ten times for once that we recur to any of Lord 
Byron's. Or if there are any of the latter's writings, that 
we can dwell upon in the same way, that is, as lasting 
and heart-felt sentiments, it is when, laying aside his usual 
pomp and pretension, he descends with Mr. Wordsworth 
to the common ground of a disinterested humanity. It 
may be considered as characteristic of our poet's writings, 
that they either make no impression on the mind at all, seem 
mere nonsense-verses, or that they leave a mark behind 
them that never wears out. They either 

" Fall blunted from the indurated breast " — 

without any perceptible result, or they absorb it like a 
passion. To one class of readers he appears sublime, to 
another (and we fear the largest) ridiculous. He has 
probably realised Milton's wish, — " and fit audience found, 



198 English Literature 

though few : " but we suspect he is not reconciled to the 
alternative. There are delightful passages in the Excur- 
sion, both of natural description and of inspired reflectioi 
(passages of the latter kind that in the sound of the 
thoughts and of the swelling language resemble heavenly 
symphonies, mournful requiems over the grave of human 
hopes) ; but we must add, in justice and in sincerity, that 
we think it impossible that this work should ever become 
popular, even in the same degree as the Lyrical Ballads. It 
affects a system without having any intelligible clue to one ; 
and instead of unfolding a principle in various and striking 
lights, repeats the same conclusions till they become flat 
and insipid. Mr. Wordsworth's mind is obtuse, except as 
it is the organ and the receptacle of accumulated feelings: 
it is not analytic, but synthetic; it is reflecting, rather than 
theoretical. The Excursion, we believe, fell still-born 
from the press. There was something abortive, and clumsy, 
and ill-judged in the attempt. It was long and laboured. 
The personages, for the most part, were low, the fare 
rustic : the plan raised expectations which were not ful- 
filled, and the effect was like being ushered into a stately 
hall and invited to sit down to a splendid banquet in the 
company of clowns, and with nothing but successive courses 
of apple-dumplings served up. It was not even toujoiirs 
perdrixl 

Mr. Wordsworth, in his person, is above the middle size, 
with marked features, and an air somewhat stately and 
Quixotic. He reminds one of some of Holbein's heads, 
grave, saturnine, with a slight indication of sly humour, 
kept under by the manners of the age or by the pretensions 
of the person. He has a peculiar sweetness in his smile, and 
great depth and manliness and a rugged harmony, in the 
tones of his voice. His manner of reading his own poetry 
is particularly imposing; and in his favourite passages his 



Mr. Wordsworth 199 

eye beams with preternatural lustre, and the meaning la- 
tours slowly up from his swelling breast. No one who has 
seen him at these moments could go away with an impres- 
sion that he was a " man of no mark or likelihood." Per- 
haps the comment of his face and voice is necessary to 
convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may not 
be intelHgible, but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is 
clear that he is either mad or inspired. In company, even 
in a tete-a-tete, Mr. Wordsworth is often silent, indolent, 
and reserved. If he is become verbose and oracular of 
late years, he was not so in his better days. He threw OLit 
a bold or an indifferent remark without either effort or 
pretension, and relapsed into musing again. He shone most 
(because he seemed most roused and animated) in reciting 
his own poetry, or in talking about it. He sometimes gave 
striking views of his feelings and trains of association in 
composing certain passages ; or if one did not always under- 
stand his distinctions, still there was no want of interest — 
there was a latent meaning worth inquiring into, like a 
vein of ore that one cannot exactly hit upon at the moment, 
but of which there are sure indications. His standard of 
poetry is high and severe, almost to exclusiveness. He 
admits of nothing below, scarcely of any thing above him- 
self. It is fine to hear him talk of the way in which certain 
subjects should have been treated by eminent poets, accord- 
ing to his notions of the art. Thus he finds fault with 
Dryden's description of Bacchus in the Alexander s Feast, 
as if he were a mere good-looking youth, or boon com- 
panion — 

" Flushed with a purple grace, 
He shows his honest face " — 

instead of representing the God returning from the con- 
quest of India, crowned with vine-leaves, and drawn by 



200 English Literature 

panthers, and followed by troops of satyrs, of wild men 
and animals that he had tamed. You would think, in hear- 
ing him speak on this subject, that you saw Titian's picture 
of the meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne — so classic were his 
conceptions, so glowing his style. Milton is his great idol, 
and he sometimes dares to compare himself with him. His 
Sonnets, indeed, have something of the same high-raised 
tone and prophetic spirit. Chaucer is another prime fa- 
vourite of his, and he has been at the pains to modernize 
some of the Canterbury Tales. Those persons who look 
upon Mr. Wordsworth as a merely puerile writer, must be 
rather at a loss to account for his strong predilection for 
such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not 
think our author has any very cordial sympathy with 
Shakspeare. How should he? Shakspeare- was the least 
of an egotist of anybody in the world. He does not much 
rehsh the variety and scope of dramatic composition. " He 
hates those interlocutions between Lucius and Caius." Yet 
Mr. Wordsworth himself wrote a tragedy when he was 
young; and we have heard the following energetic lines 
quoted from it, as put into the mouth of a person smit 
with remorse for some rash crime : 

"Action is momentary, 
The motion of a muscle this way or that; 
Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite ! " 

Perhaps for want of light and shade, and the unshackled 
spirit of the drama, this performance was never brought 
forward. Our critic has a great dislike to Gray, and a 
fondness for Thomson and Collins. It is mortifying to 
hear him speak of Pope and Dryden, whom, because they 
have been supposed to have all the possible excellences of 
poetry, he will allow to have none. Nothing, however, can 
be fairer, or more amusing, than the way in which he some- 



Mr. Wordsworth 201 

times exposes the unmeaning verbiage of modern poetry. 
Thus, in the beginning of Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human 
Wishes — 

*' Let observation with extensive view 
Survey mankind from China to Peru " — 

he says there is a total want of imagination accompanying 
the words, the same idea is repeated three times under the 
disguise of a different phraseology : it comes to this — " let 
observation, with extensive observation, observe mankind ; " 
or take away the first line, and the second, 

" Survey mankind from China to Peru," 

literally conveys the whole. Mr. Wordsworth is, we must 
say, a perfect Drawcansir as to prose writers. He com- 
plains of the dry reasoners and matter-of-fact people for 
their want of passion; and he is jealous of the rhetorical 
declaimers and rhapsodists as trenching on the province of 
poetry. He condemns all French writers (as well of poetry 
as prose) in the lump. His list in this way is indeed small. 
He approves of Walton's Angler, Paley, and some other 
writers of an inoffensive modesty of pretension. He also 
likes books of voyages and travels, and Robinson Crusoe. 
In art, he greatly esteems Bewick's woodcuts, and Water- 
loo's sylvan etchings. But he sometimes takes a higher 
tone, and gives his mind fair play. We have known him 
enlarge with a noble intelligence and enthusiasm on Nicolas 
Poussin's fine landscape-compositions, pointing out the 
unity of design that pervades them, the superintending 
mind, the imaginative principle that brings all to bear on 
the same end; and declaring he would not give a rush for 
any landscape that did not express the time of day, the 
climate, the period of the world it was meant to illustrate, 



202 English Literature 

or had not this character of wholeness in it. His eye also 
does justice to Rembrandt's fine and masterly effects. I a 
the way in which that artist works something out of noth- 
ing, and transforms the stump of a tree, a common figure 
into an ideal object, by the gorgeous light and shade thrown 
upon it, he perceives an analogy to his own mode of invest- 
ing the minute details of nature with an atmosphere of 
sentiment ; and in pronouncing Rembrandt to be a man of 
genius, feels that he strengthens his own claim to the title. 
It has been said of Mr. Wordsworth, that " he hates con- 
chology, that he hates the Venus of Medicis." But these, 
we hope, are mere epigrams and jeiix-d' esprit, as far from 
truth as they are free from malice ; a sort of running satire 
or critical clenches — 

" Where one for sense and one for rhyme 
Is quite sufficient at one time." 

We think, however, that if Mr. Wordsworth had been a 
more liberal and candid critic, he would have been a more 
sterling writer. If a greater number of sources of pleasure 
had been open to him, he would have communicated pleasure 
to the world more frequently. Had he been less fastidious 
in pronouncing sentence on the works of others, his own 
would have been received more favourably, and treated 
more leniently. The current of his feeHngs is deep, but 
narrow; the range of his understanding is lofty and aspir- 
ing rather than discursive. The force, the originality, the 
absolute truth and identity with which he feels some things, 
makes him indifferent to so many others. The simplicity 
and enthusiasm of his feelings, with respect to nature, ren- 
ders him bigotted and intolerant in his judgments of men 
and things. But it happens to him, as to others, that his 
strength lies in his weakness ; and perhaps we have no* 
right to complain. We might get rid of the cynic and 



Mr. Wordsworth 203 

the egotist, and find in his stead a common-place man. We 
should " take the good the Gods provide us : " a fine and 
original vein of poetry is not one of their most contemptible 
gifts, and the rest is scarcely worth thinking of, except as 
it may be a mortification to those who expect perfection 
from human nature ; or who have been idle enough at some 
period of their lives, to deify men of genius as possessing 
claims above it. But this is a chord that jars, and we 
shall not dwell upon it. 

Lord Byron we have called, according to the old proverb, 
" the spoiled child of fortune : " Mr. Wordsworth might 
plead, in mitigation of some peculiarities, that he is " the 
spoiled child of disappointment." We are convinced, if he 
had been early a popular poet, he would have borne his 
honours meekly, and would have been a person of great 
honhommie and frankness of disposition. But the sense of 
injustice and of undeserved ridicule sours the temper and 
narrows the views. To have produced works of genius, and 
to find them neglected or treated with scorn is one of the 
heaviest trials of human patience. We exaggerate our own 
merits when they are denied by others, and are apt to 
grudge and cavil at every particle of praise bestowed on 
those to whom we feel a conscious superiority. In mere 
self-defence we turn against the world, when it turns against 
us ; brood over the undeserved slights we receive ; and thus 
the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself 
in effusions of petulance and self-conceit. Mr. Words- 
worth has thought too much of contemporary critics and 
criticism ; and less than he ought of the award of posterity, 
and of the opinion, we do not say of private friends, but 
of those who were made so by their admiration of his 
genius. He did not court popularity by a conformity to 
established models, and he ought not to have been surprised 
that his originality was not understood as a matter of 



204 English Literature 

course. He has gnawed too much on the bridle; and has 
often thrown out crusts to the critics, in mere defiance or 
as a point of honour when he was challenged, which other- 
wise his own good sense would have withheld. We suspect 
that Mr. Wordsworth's feelings are a little morbid in this 
respect, or that he resents censure more than he is gratified 
by praise. Otherwise, the tide has turned much in his 
favour of late years — he has a large body of determined 
partisans — and is at present sufficiently in request with the 
public to save or reheve him from the last necessity to 
which a man of genius can be reduced — that of becoming 
the God of his own idolatry! 



XI 
MR. COLERIDGE 

The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and 
the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so 
far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in 
retrospect, and doat on past achievements. The accumula- 
tion of knowledge has been so great, that we are lost in 
wonder at the height it has reached, instead of attempting 
to climb or add to it; while the variety of objects distracts 
and dazzles the looker-on. What niche remains unoccu- 
pied? What path untried? What is the use of doing 
anything, unless we could do better than all those who 
have gone before us? What hope is there of this? We 
are like those who have been to see some noble monument 
of art, who are content to admire without thinking of 
rivalling it; or like guests after a feast, who praise the 
hospitality of the donor " and thank the bounteous Pan " 
— perhaps carrying away some trifling fragments ; or like 
the spectators of a mighty battle, who still hear its sound 
afar off, and the clashing of armour and the neighing of 
the war-horse and the shout of victory is in their ears, like 
the rushing of innumerable waters ! 

Mr. Coleridge has " a mind reflecting ages past : " his 
voice is like the echo of the congregated roar of the *' dark 
rearward and abyss " of thought. He who has seen a 
mouldering tower by the side of a chrystal lake, hid by 
the mist, but glittering in the wave below, may conceive the 
dim, gleaming, uncertain intelligence of his eye : he who 
has marked the evening clouds uprolled (a world of 

205 



2o6 English Literature 

vapours), has seen the picture of his mind, unearthly, 
unsubstantial, with gorgeous tints and ever- varying forms— 

" That which was now a horse, even with a thought 
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct 
As water is in water." 

Our author's mind is (as he himself might express it) 
tangential. There is no subject on which he has not 
touched, none on which he has rested. With an under- 
standing fertile, subtle, expansive, " quick, forgetive, ap- 
prehensive," beyond all living precedent, few traces of it 
will perhaps remain. He lends himself to all impressions 
ahke ; he gives up his mind and liberty of thought to none. 
He is a general lover of art and science, and wedded to 
no one in particular. He pursues knowledge as a mistress, 
with outstretched hands and winged speed; but as he is 
about to embrace her, his Daphne turns — alas ! not to a 
laurel ! Hardly a speculation has been left on record frcm 
the earliest time, but it is loosely folded up in Mr. 
Coleridge's memory, Hke a rich, but somewhat tattered 
piece of tapestry: we might add (with more seeming than 
real extravagance), that scarce a thought can pass through 
the mind of man, but its sound has at some time or other 
passed over his head with rustling pinions. On whatever 
question or author you speak, he is prepared to take up 
the theme with advantage — from Peter Abelard down to 
Thomas Moore, from the subtlest metaphysics to the 
politics of the Courier. There is no man of genius, in 
whose praise he descants, but the critic seems to stand 
above the author, and " what in him is weak, to strengthen, 
what is low, to raise and support : " nor is there any 
work of genius that does not come out of his hands 
like an illuminated Missal, sparkling even in its defects. 
If Mr. Coleridge had not been the most impressive 



Mr. Coleridge 207 

talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest 
writer ; but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor, 
and mortgages the admiration of posterity for the stare of 
an idler. If he had not been a poet, he would have been 
a powerful logician; if he had not dipped his wing in the 
Unitarian controversy, he might have soared to the very 
summit of fancy. But in writing verse, he is trying to 
subject the Muse to transcendental theories: in his abstract 
reasoning, he misses his way by strewing it with flowers. 
All that he has done of moment, he had done twenty years 
ago : since then, he may be said to have lived on the sound 
of his own voice. Mr. Coleridge is too rich in intellectual 
wealth, to need to task himself to any drudgery: he has 
only to draw the sliders of his imagination, and a thousand 
subjects expand before him, startling him with their bril- 
liancy, or losing themselves in endless obscurity — 

"And by the force of blear illusion, 
They draw him on to his confusion." 

What is the little he could add to the stock, compared with 
the countless stores that lie about him, that he should 
stoop to pick up a name, or to polish an idle fancy? He 
walks abroad in the majesty of an universal understanding, 
eyeing the '' rich strond," or golden sky above him, and 
'' goes sounding on his way," in eloquent accents, uncom- 
pelled and free ! 

Persons of the greatest capacity are often tho^e, who 
for this reason do the least ; for surveying themselves from 
the highest point of view, amidst the infinite variety of the 
universe, their own share in it seems trifling, and scarce 
worth a thought, and they prefer the contemplation of z\\ 
that is, or has been, or can be, to the making a coil about 
doing what, when done, is no better than vanity. It is 
hard to concentrate all our attention and efforts on one 



2o8 English Literature 

pursuit, except from ignorance of others ; and without this 
concentration of our faculties, no great progress can be 
made in any one thing. It is not merely that the mind is 
not capable of the effort ; it does not think the effort worth 
making. Action is one ; but thought is manifold. He 
whose- restless eye glances through the wide compass of 
nature and art, will not consent to have '' his own nothings 
monstered : " but he must do this, before he can give his 
whole soul to them. The mind, after " letting contempla- 
tion have its fill," or 

" Sailing with supreme dominion 
Through the azure deep of air," 

sinks down on the ground, breathless, exhausted, power- 
less, inactive ; or if it must have some vent to its feelings, 
seeks the rriost easy and obvious ; is soothed by friendly 
flattery, lulled by the murmur of immediate applause, 
thinks as it were aloud, and babbles in its dreams! A 
scholar (so to speak) is a more disinterested and abstracted 
character than a mere author. The first looks at the num- 
berless volumes of a library, and says, '' All these are 
mine:" the other points to a single volume (perhaps it 
may be an immortal one) and says, " My name is written 
on the back of it." This is a puny and groveling ambition, 
beneath the lofty ampHtude of Mr. Coleridge's mind. No, 
he revolves in his wayward soul, or utters to the passing 
wind, or discourses to his own shadow, things mightier 
and more various ! — Let us draw the curtain, and unlock 
the shrine. 

Learning rocked him in his cradle, and while yet a child. 

He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." 

At sixteen he wrote his Ode on Chatterton, and he still 
reverts to that period with delight, not so much as it relates 



Mr. Coleridge 209 

to himself (for that string of his own early promise of 
fame rather jars than otherwise) but as exemplifying the 
youth of a poet. Mr. Coleridge talks of himself, without 
being an egotist, for in him the individual is always merged 
in the abstract and general. He distinguished himself at 
school and at the University by his knowledge of the 
classics, and gained several prizes for Greek epigrams. 
How many men are there (great scholars, celebrated names 
in literature) who having done the same thing in their 
youth, have no other idea all the rest of their lives but of 
this achievement, of a fellowship and dinner, and who, 
installed in academic honours, would look down on our 
author as a mere strolling bard ! At Christ's Hospital, 
where he was brought up, he was the idol of those among 
his schoolfellows, who mingled with their bookish studies 
the music of thought and of humanity ; and he was usually 
attended round the cloisters by a group of these (inspiring 
and inspired) whose hearts, even then, burnt within them 
as he talked, and where the sounds yet linger to mock Elia 
on his way, still turning pensive to the past! One of the 
finest and rarest parts of Mr. Coleridge's conversation, is 
when he expatiates on the Greek tragedians (not that he 
is not well acquainted, when he pleases, with the epic poets, 
or the philosophers, or orators, or historians of antiquity) 
— on the subtle reasonings and melting pathos of Euripides, 
on the harmonious gracefulness of Sophocles, tuning his 
love-laboured song, like sweetest warblings from a sacred 
grove; on the high-wrought, trumpet-tongued eloquence of 
^schylus, whose Prometheus, above all, is like an Ode to 
Fate, and a pleading with Providence, his thoughts being 
let loose as his body is chained on his solitary rock, and his 
afflicted will (the emblem of mortality) 

" Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." 



210 English Literature 

As the impassioned critic speaks and rises in his theme, 
you would think you heard the voice of the Man hated by 
the Gods, contending with the wild winds as they roar, 
and his eye glitters with the spirit of Antiquity! 

Next, he was engaged with Hartley's tribes of mind, 
" etherial braid, thought-woven," — and he busied himself 
for a year or two with vibrations and vibratiuncles, and 
the great law of association that binds all things in its 
mystic chain, and the doctrine of Necessity (the mild 
teacher of Charity) and the Millennium, anticipative of a 
life to come — and he plunged deep into the controversy on 
Matter and Spirit, and, as an escape from Dr. Priestley's 
Materialism, where he felt himself imprisoned by the 
logician's spell, like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree, he became 
suddenly enamoured of Bishop Berkeley's fairy-world,* and 
used in all companies to build the universe, like a brave 
poetical fiction, of fine words — and he was deep-read in 
Malebranche, and in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a 
huge pile of learning, unwieldy, enormous) and in Lord 
Brook's hieroglyphic theories, and in Bishop Butler's Ser- 
mons, and in the Duchess of Newcastle's fantastic folios, 
and in Clarke and South and Tillotson, and all the fine 
thinkers and masculine reasoners of that age — and Leib- 
nitz's Pre-established Harmony reared its arch above his 
head, like the rainbow in the cloud, covenanting with the 
hopes of man — and then he fell plump, ten thousand fathoms 

* Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some beautiful 
sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The third 
was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be 
more characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his 
ideas indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmur- 
ing as it flows, discharging its waters and still replenished — 

" And so by many winding nooks it strays, 
With willing sport to the wild ocean ! " 



Mr. Coleridge 211 

down (but his wings saved him harmless) into the hovtus 
siccus of Dissent, where he pared rehgion down to the 
standard of reason, and stripped faith of mystery, an J 
preached Christ crucified and the Unity of the Godhead, 
and so dwelt for a while in the spirit of John Huss and 
Jerome of Prague and Socinus and old John Zisca, and ran 
through Xeal's History of the Puritans, and Calamy's Non- 
Conformists' Memorial, having like thoughts and passions 
with them— but then Spinoza became his God, and he took 
up the vast chain of being in his hand, and the round world 
became the centre and the soul of all things in some shad- 
owy sense, forlorn of meaning, and around him he beheld 
the living traces and the sky-pointing proportions of the 
mighty Pan — but poetry redeemed him from this spectral 
philosophy, and he bathed his heart in beauty, and gazed at 
the golden light of heaven, and drank of the spirit of the 
janiverse, and wandered at eve by fairy-stream or fountain, 



" When he saw nought but beauty, 

When he heard the voice of that Almighty One 
In every breeze that blew, or wave that murmured "- 



and wedded with truth in Plato's shade, and in the writings 
of Proclus and Plotinus saw the ideas of things in the 
eternal mind, and unfolded all mysteries with the School- 
men and fathomed the depths of Duns Scotus and Thomas 
Aquinas, and entered the third heaven with Jacob Behmen, 
and walked hand in hand with Swedenborg through the 
pavilions of the New Jerusalem, and sung his faith in the 
promise and in the word in his Religious Musings — and 
lowering himself from that dizzy height, poised himself on 
^lilton's wings, and spread out his thoughts in charity with 
the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's 
Sonnets, and studied Cowper's blank verse, and betook him- 



212 English Literature 

self to Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and sported with 
the wits of Charles the Second's days and of Queen Anne, 
and relished Swift's style and that of the John Bull (Ar- 
buthnot's we mean, not Mr. Croker's), and dalhed with the 
British Essayists and Novelists, and knew all qualities of 
more modern writers with a learned spirit, Johnson, and 
Goldsmith, and Junius, and Burke, and Godwin, and the 
Sorrows of Werter, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Vol- 
taire, and Marivaux, and Crebillon, and thousands more — 
now '' laughed with Rabelais in his easy chair " or pointed 
to Hogarth, or afterwards dwelt on Claude's classic scenes, 
or spoke with rapture of Raphael, and compared the women 
at Rome to figures that had walked out of his pictures, or 
visited the Oratory of Pisa, and described the works of 
Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Massaccio, and gave the moral 
of the picture of the Triumph of Death, where the leggars 
and the wretched invoke his dreadful dart, but the rich 
and mighty of the earth quail and shrink before it ; and i i 
that land of siren sights and sounds, saw a dance of peasant 
girls, and was charmed with lutes and gondolas, — or wan- 
dered into Germany and lost himself in the labyrinths of the 
Hartz Eorest and of the Kantean philosophy, and amongst 
the cabalistic names of Fichte and Schelling and Lessing, 
and God knows who — this was long after, but all the former 
while he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes with tears, 
as he hailed the rising orb of liberty, since quenched in 
darkness and in blood, and had kindled his affections at the 
blaze of the French Revolution, and sang for joy when the 
towers of the Bastile and the proud places of the insolent 
and the oppressor fell, and would have floated his bark, 
freighted with fondest fancies, across the Atlantic wave 
with Southey and others to seek for peace and freedom— 

" In Philarmonia's undivided dale ! " 



Mr. Coleridge 213 

Alas! '' Frailty, thy name is Genius!'' — What is become of 
all this mighty heap of hope, of thought, of learning, and 
humanity? It has ended in swallowing doses of oblivion 
and in writing paragraphs in the Courier. — Such and so 
little is the mind of man ! 

It was not to be supposed that Mr. Coleridge could keep 
on at the rate he set off; he could not realize all he knew 
or thought, and less could not fix his desultory ambition; 
other stimulants supplied the place, and kept up the intox- 
icating dream, the fever and the madness of his early im- 
pressions. Liberty (the philosopher's and the poet's bride) 
had fallen a victim, meanwhile, to the murderous practice 
of the hag, Legitimacy. Proscribed by court-hirelings, too 
romantic for the herd of vulgar politicians, our enthusiast 
stood at bay, and at last turned on the pivot of a subtle 
casuistry to the unclean side: but his discursive reason 
would not let him trammel himself into a poet-laureate or 
stamp-distributor, and he stopped, ere he had quite passed 
that well-known " bourne from whence no traveller returns " 
— and so has sunk into torpid, uneasy repose, tantalized by 
useless resources, haunted by vain imaginings, his lips idly 
moving, but his heart for ever still, or, as the shattered 
chords vibrate of themselves, making melancholy music to 
the ear of memory ! Such is the fate of genius in an age, 
when in the unequal contest with sovereign wrong, every 
man is ground to powder who is not either a born slave, 
or who does not willingly and at once offer up the yearn- 
ings of humanity and the dictates of reason as a welcome 
sacrifice to besotted prejudice and loathsome power. 

Of all Mr. Coleridge's productions, the Ancient Mariner 
is the only one that we could with confidence put into 
any person's hands, on whom we wished to impress a fa- 
vourable idea of his extraordinary powers. Let whatever 
other objections be made to it, it is unquestionably a work 



214 English Literature 

of genius — of wild, irregular, overwhelming imagination, 
and has that rich, varied movement in the verse, which 
gives a distant idea of the lofty or changeful tones of Mr. 
Coleridge's voice. In the Christobd, there is one splen- 
did passage on divided friendship. The Translation of 
Schiller's Wallenstein is also a masterly production in its 
kind, faithful and spirited. Among his smaller pieces there 
are occasional bursts of pathos and fancy, equal to what 
we might expect from him; but these form the exception, 
and not the rule. Such, for instance, is his affecting Sonnet 
to the author of the Robbers. 



Schiller ! that hour I would have wish'd to die, 
If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent 
From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, 

That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry — 

That in no after-moment aught less vast 

Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout 
Black horror scream'd, and all her goblin rout 

From the more with'ring scene diminish'd pass'd. 

Ah ! Bard tremendous in sublimity ! 

Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood, 

Wand'ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye, 
Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood ! 
Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood, 

Then weep aloud in a wild ecstasy." 



His Tragedy, entitled Remorse, is full of beautiful and 
striking passages, but it does not place the author in the 
first rank of dramatic writers. But if Mr. Coleridge's works 
do not place him in that rank, they injure instead of con- 
veying a just idea of the man, for he himself is certainly 
in the first class of general intellect. 

If our author's poetry is inferior to his conversation, his 
prose is utterly abortive. Hardly a gleam is to be found 
in it of the brilliancy and richness of those stores of thought 
and language that he pours out incessantly, when they are 



Mr. Coleridge 215 

lost like drops of water in the ground. The principal work, 
in which he has attempted to embody his general view of 
things, is the Friend, of which, though it contains some 
noble passages and fine trains of thought, prolixity and 
obscurity are the most frequent characteristics. 



XII 

MR. SOUTHEY 

Perhaps the most pleasing and striking of all Mr. 
Southey's poems are not his triumphant taunts hurled 
against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty,, 
but those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems con- 
scious of his own infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish 
to correct by thought and time the precocity and sharpness 
of his disposition. May the quaint but affecting aspiration 
expressed in one of these be fulfilled, that as he mellows 
into maturer age, all such asperities may wear oft*, and 
he himself become 

" Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree ! " 

Mr. Southey's prose-style can hardly be too much praised. 
It is plain, clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its 
texture, but with a grave and sparkling admixture of 
archaisms in its ornaments and occasional phraseology. 
He is the best and most natural prose-writer of any poet of 
the day; we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron, 
Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance. The 
manner is perhaps superior to the matter, that is, in his 
Essays and Reviews. There is rather a want of originality 
and even of impetus: but there is no want of playful or 
biting satire, of ingenuity, of casuistry, of learning and of 
information. He is ''full of wise saws and modern" (as 
well as ancient) " instances." Mr. Southey may not always 
convince his opponents; but he seldom fails to stagger, 

216 



Mr. Southey 217 

never to gall them. In a word, we may describe his style 
by saying that it has not the body or thickness of port 
wine, but it is like clear sherry, with kernels of old authors 
thrown into it ! — -He also excels as an historian and prose- 
translator. His histories abound in information, and ex- 
hibit proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. 
By no uncommon process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems 
willing to steady the extreme levity of his opinions ^nd 
feelings by an appeal to facts. His translations of the 
Spanish and French romances are also executed con amove, 
and with the literary fidelity of a mere linguist. That of 
the Cid, in particular, is a masterpiece. Not a word coulJ 
be altered for the better in the old scriptural style which 
it adopts in conformity to the original. It is no less inter- 
esting in itself, or as a record of high and chivalrous feel- 
ings and manners, than it is worthy of perusal as a literary 
curiosity. 

Mr. Southey's conversation has a little resemblance 
to a common-place book ; his habitual deportment to 
a piece of clock-work. He is not remarkable either as a 
reasoner or an observer : but he is quick, unaffected, 
replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading, 
and exceedingly happy in his play upon words, as most 
scholars are who give their minds this sportive turn. We 
have chiefly seen Mr. Southey in company where few people 
appear to advantage, we mean in that of Mr. Coleridge. 
He has not certainly the same range of speculation, nor the 
same flow of sounding words, but he makes up by the 
details of knowledge and by a scrupulous correctness of 
statement for w^hat he wants in originality of thought, or 
impetuous declamation. The tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice 
are eloquence : those of Mr. Southey are meagre, shrill, and 
dry. Mr. Coleridge's forte is conversation, and he is con- 
scious of this : Air. Southey evidently considers writing as 



2i8 English Literature 

his stronghold, and if gravelled in an argument, or at a 
loss for an explanation, refers to something he has written 
on the subject, or brings out his port- folio, doubled dDwn 
in dog-ears, in confirmation of some fact. He is schclastic 
and professional in his ideas. He sets more value on what 
he writes than on what he says : he is perhaps prouder 
of his library than of his own productions — themselves a 
library ! He is more simple in his manners than his friend 
Mr. Coleridge; but at the same time less cordial or con- 
ciliating. He is less vain, or has less hope of pleasing*, 
and therefore lays himself less out to please. There is an 
air of condescension in his civility. With a tall, loosa 
figure, a peaked austerity of countenance, and no inclina- 
tion to embonpoint, you would say he has something puri- 
tanical, something ascetic in his appearance. He answers 
to Mandeville's description of Addison, " a parson in a 
tye-wig." He is not a boon companion, nor does he indulge 
in the pleasures of the table, nor in any other vice ; nor are 
we aware that Mr. Southey is chargeable with any human 
frailty but — zvant of charity! Having fewer errors to plead 
guilty to, he is less lenient to those of others. He was 
born an age too late. Had he lived a century or two ago, 
he would have been a happy as well as blameless char- 
acter. But the distraction of the time has unsettled him, 
and the multiplicity of his pretensions have jostled with 
each other. No man in our day (at least no man of 
genius) has led so uniformly and entirely the life of a 
scholar from boyhood to the present hour, devoting himself 
to learning with the enthusiasm of an early love, with the 
severity and constancy of a religious vow — and well would 
it have been for him if he had confined himself to this, and 
not undertaken to pull down or to patch up the State ! 
However irregular in his opinions, Mr. Southey is constant, 
unremitting, mechanical in his studies, and the performance 



Mr. Southey 219 

of his duties. There is nothing Pindaric or Shandean here. 
In all the relations and charities of private life, he is correct, 
exemplary, generous, just. We never heard a single im- 
propriety laid to his charge; and if he has many enemies, 
few men can boast more numerous or stauncher friends. — 
The variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking- 
contrast to the mode in which they are produced. He 
rises early, and writes or reads till breakfast-time. He 
writes or reads after breakfast till dinner, after dinner till 
tea, and from tea till bed-time — 

"And follows so the ever-running year 
With profitable labour to his grave. — " 

on Derwent's banks, beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study 
serves him for business, exercise, recreation. He passes 
from verse to prose, from history to poetry, from reading 
to writing, by a stop-watch. He writes a fair hand without 
blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves of¥ when he comes 
to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for 
another, as opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after 
all rather the recipient and transmitter of knowledge, than 
the originator of it. He has hardly grasp of thought 
enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His passions 
do not amount to more than irritability. With some gall 
in his pen, and coldness in his manner, he has a great deal 
of kindness in his heart. Rash in his opinions, he is steady 
in his attachments — and is a man, in many particulars ad- 
mirable, in all respectable — his political inconsistency alone 
excepted ! 



XIII 
ELIA 

So Mr. Charles Lamb chooses to designate himself; and 
as his lucubrations under this nom de guerre have gained 
considerable notice from the public, we shall here attempt 
to describe his style and manner, and to point out his 
beauties and defects. 

Mr. Lamb, though he has borrowed from previous 
sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular and 
admired, has groped out his way, and made his most suc- 
cessful researches among the more obscure and intricate, 
though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our 
writers. He has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a 
remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious relics, 
and pored over moth-eaten, decayed manuscripts, for the 
benefit of the more inquisitive and discerning part of the 
public. Antiquity after a time has the grace of novelty, 
as old fashions revived are mistaken for new ones ; and a 
certain quaintness and singularity of style is an agreeable 
reUef to the smooth and insipid monotony of modern com- 
position. Mr. Lamb has succeeded not by conforming to 
the Spirit of the Age, but in opposition to it. He does not 
march boldly along with the crowd, but steals off the pave- 
ment to pick his way in the contrary direction. He prefers 
bye-ways to highways. When the full tide of human life 
pours along to some festive show, to some pageant of a 
day, Elia would stand on one side to look over an old 
book-stall, or stroll down some deserted pathway in search 
of a pensive description over a tottering door-way, or some 

220 



Eli A 221 

quaint device in architecture, illustrative of embryo art 
and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an 
antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting humanity; the film 
of the past hovers for ever before him. He is shy, sensi- 
tive, the reverse of every thing coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and 
common-place. He would fain " shuffle off this mortal 
coil," and his spirit clothes itself in the garb of elder time, 
homelier, but more durable. He is borne along with no 
pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a fash- 
ionable phraseology; is neither fop nor sophist. He has 
none of the turbulence or froth of new-fangled opinions. 
His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take 
an underground course, or be conveyed through old-fash- 
ioned conduit-pipes. Mr. Lamb does not court popularity, 
nor strut in gaudy plumes, but shrinks from every kind of 
ostentatious and obvious pretension into the retirement of 
his own mind. 



The self-applauding bird, the peacock see : — 
Mark what a sumptuous pharisee is he ! 
Meridian sun-beams tempt him to unfold 
His radiant glories, azure, green, and gold: 
He treads as if, some solemn music near, 
His measured step were governed by his ear : 
And seems to say — ' Ye meaner fowl, give place, 
I am all splendour, dignity, and grace ! ' 
Not so the pheasant on his charms presumes, 
Though he too has a glory in his plumes. 
He, Christian-like, retreats with modest mien 
To the close copse or far sequestered green, 
And shines without desiring to be seen." 



These lines well describe the modest and delicate beauties 
of Mr. Lamb's writings, contrasted with the lofty and vain- 
glorious pretensions of some of his contemporaries. This 
gentleman is not one of those who pay all their homage 
to the prevailing idol: he thinks that 



222 English Literature 

" Newborn gauds are made and moulded of things past," 

nor does he 

" Give to dust that is a little gilt 
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted." 

His convictions '' do not in broad rumor lie," nor are they 
" set off to the world in the glistering foil " of fashion ; 
but '' live and breathe aloft in those pure eyes, and perfect 
judgment of all-seeing time." Mr. Lamb rather affects 
and is tenacious of the obscure and remote: of that which 
rests on its own intrinsic and silent merit; which scorns 
all alliance, or even the suspicion of owing any thing to 
noisy clamour, to the glare of circumstances. There is a 
fine tone of chiaroscuro, a moral perspective in his 
writings. He delights to dwell on that which is fresh to the 
eye of memory ; he yearns after and covets what soothes the 
frailty of human nature. That touches him most nearly 
which is withdrawn to a certain distance, which verges on 
the borders of oblivion : — that piques and provokes his fancy 
most, which is hid from a superficial glance. That which, 
though gone by, is still remembered, is in his view more 
genuine, and has given more " vital signs that it will live," 
than a thing of yesterday, that may be forgotten to-morrow. 
Death has in this sense the spirit of life in it; and the 
shadowy has to our author something substantial in it. 
Ideas savour most of reality in his mind ; or rather his 
imagination loiters on the edge of each, and a page of his 
writings recalls to our fancy the stranger on the grate, flut- 
tering in its dusky tenuity, with its idle superstition and 
hospitable welcome ! 

Mr. Lamb has a distate to new faces, to new books, to 
new buildings, to new customs. He is shy of all imposing 
appearances, of all assumptions of self-importance, of all 



Elia 223 

adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical advantages, even 
to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not 
rely upon or ordinarily avail himself of them ; he holds 
them in abhorrence, he utterly abjures and discards them, 
and places a great gulph between him and them. He dis- 
dains all the vulgar artifices of authorship, all the cant of 
criticism, and helps to notoriety. He has no grand swell- 
ing theories to attract the visionary and the enthusiast, no 
passing topics to allure the thoughtless and the vain. He 
evades the present, he mocks the future. His affections 
revert to and settle on the past, but then, even this must 
have something personal and local in it to interest him 
deeply and thoroughly; he pitches his tent in the suburbs 
of existing manners ; brings down the account of char- 
acter to the few straggling remains of the last generation ; 
seldom ventures beyond the bills of mortality, and occupies 
that nice point between egotism and disinterested human- 
ity. No one makes the tour of our southern metropolis, 
or describes the manners of the last age, so well as Mr. 
Lamb — with so fine, and yet so formal an air — with such 
vivid obscurity, with such arch piquancy, such picturesque 
quaintness, such smiHng pathos. How admirably he has 
sketched the former inmates of the South-Sea House ; 
what '' fine fretwork he makes of their double and single 
entries ! " With what a firm, yet subtle pencil he has em- 
bodied Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist! How notably he 
embalms a battered beau; how delightfully an amour, that 
was cold forty years ago, revives in his pages ! With what 
well-disguised humour, he introduces us to his relations, and 
how freely he serves up his friends ! Certainly, some of 
his portraits are fixtures, and will do to hang up as lasting 
and lively emblems of human infirmity. Then there is no 
one who has so sure an ear for " the chimes at midnight," 
not even excepting Mr. Justice Shallow ; nor could Master 



224 English Literature 

Silence himself take his " cheese and pippins " with a more 
significant and satisfactory air. With what a gusto Mr. 
Lamb describes the inns and courts of law, the Temple and 
Gray's-Inn, as if he had been a student there for the last 
two hundred years, and had been as well acquainted with 
the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with his portrait 
or writings ! It is hard to say whether St. John's Gate is 
connected with more intense and authentic associations in 
his mind, as a part of old London Wall, or as the frontis- 
piece (time out of mind) of the Gentleman's Magazine. 
He haunts WatHng-street like a gentle spirit; the avenues 
to the play-houses are thick with panting recollections, an 1 
Christ's-Hospital still breathes the balmy breath of infancy 
in his description of it! Whittington and his Cat are a 
fine hallucination for Mr. Lamb's historic Muse, and we 
believe he never heartily forgave a certain writer who took 
the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands. The streets 
of London are his fairy-land, teeming with wonder, with 
Hfe and interest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the 
eager eye of childhood ; he has contrived to weave its tritest 
traditions into a bright and endless romance ! 

Mr. Lamb's taste in books is also fine, and it is peculiar. 
It is not the worse for a little idiosyncrasy. He does not 
go deep into the Scotch novels, but he is at home in 
Smollett or Fielding. He is little read in Junius or Gibbon, 
but no man can give a better account of Burton's Anatomy 
of Melancholy, or Sir Thomas Brown's Urn-Burial, or 
Fuller's Worthies, or John Bunyan's Holy War. No one 
is more unimpressible to a specious declamation ; no one 
relishes a recondite beauty more. His admiration of Shak- 
speare and Milton does not make him despise Pope ; and 
he can read Parnell with patience, and Gay with delight. 
His taste in French and German literature is somewhat 
defective; nor has he made much progress in the science 



Elia 225 

of Political Economy or other abstruse studies, though 
he has read vast folios of controversial divinity, merely 
for the sake of the intricacy of style, and to save himself 
the pain of thinking. Mr. Lamb is a good judge of prints 
and pictures. His admiration of Hogarth does credit to 
both, particularly when it is considered that Leonardo da 
Vinci is- his next greatest favourite, and that his love of 
the actual does not proceed from a want of taste for the 
ideal. His worst fault is an over-eagerness of enthusiasm, 
which occasionally makes him take a surfeit of his highest 
favourites. — Mr. Lamb excels in familiar conversation al- 
most as much as in writing, when his modesty does not- 
overpower his self-possession. He is as little of a proser 
as possible, but he blurts out the finest wit and sense in the 
vs^orld. He keeps a good deal in the back-ground at first, 
till some excellent conceit pushes him forward, and then 
he abounds in whim and pleasantry. There is a primitive 
simplicity and self-denial about his manners ; and a Quaker- 
ism in his personal appearance, which is, however, relieved 
by a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence ! Mr. Lamb 
is a general favourite with those who know him. His 
character is equally singular and amiable. He is endeared 
to his friends not less by his foibles than his virtues ; he 
ensures their esteem by the one, and does not wound their 
self-love by the other. He gains ground in the opinion 
of others, by making no advances in his own. We easily 
admire genius where the diffidence of the possessor makes 
our acknowledgment of merit seem like a sort of patronage, 
or act of condescension, as we willingly extend our good 
offices where they are not exacted as obligations, or repaid 
with sullen indifference. — The style of the Essays of Elia 
is liable to the charge of a certain munnerisin. His sen- 
tences are cast in the mould of old authors ; his expressions 
are borrowed from them; but his feelings and observations 



226 English Literature 

are genuine and original, taken from actual life, or from 
his own breast; and he may be said (if any one can) " to 
have coined his heart for jests/' and to have split his brain 
for fine distinctions! Mr. Lamb, from the peculiarity of 
his exterior and address as an author, would probably 
never have made his way by detached and independent 
efforts; but, fortunately for himself and others, he has 
taken advantage of the Periodical Press, where he has 
been stuck into notice, and the texture of his compositions 
is assuredly fine enough to bear the broadest glare of pop- 
ularity that has hitherto shone upon them. Mr. Lamb's 
literary efforts have procured him civic honours (a thing 
unheard of in our times), and he has been invited, in his 
character of Elia, to dine at a select party with the Lord 
Mayor. We should prefer this distinction to that of being 
poet-laureat. We would recommend to Mr. Waithman's 
perusal (if Mr. Lamb has not anticipated us) the Rosa- 
mond Gray and the John Woodznl of the same author, as 
an agreeable relief to the noise of a City feast, and the 
heat of city elections. A friend, a short time ago, quoted 
some lines * from the last-mentioned of these works, which 
meeting Mr. Godwin's eye, he was so struck with the beauty 
of the passage, and with a consciousness of having seen it 
before, that he was uneasy till he could recollect where, and 
after hunting in vain for it in Ben Jotison, Beaumont and 
Fletcher, and other not unlikely places, sent to Mr. Lamb 
to know if he could help him to the author ! 

* The description of the sports in the forest: 

" To see the sun to bed and to arise, 
Like som£ hot amourist with glowing eyes," etc. 



XIV 

SIR WALTER SCOTT 

Sir Walter has found out (oh, rare discovery!) that 
facts are better than fiction; that there is no romance like 
the romance of real life; and that if we can but arrive at 
what men feel, do, and say in striking and singular situa- 
tions, the result will be *' more lively, audible, and full of 
vent," than the fine-spun cobwebs of the brain. With rever- 
ence be it spoken, he is like the man who having to imitate 
the squeaking of a pig upon the stage, brought the animal 
under his coat with him. Our author has conjured up the 
actual people he has to deal with, or as much as he could 
get of them, in '' their habits as they lived." He has ran- 
sacked old chronicles, and poured the contents upon his 
page ; he has squeezed out musty records ; he has consulted 
wayfaring pilgrims, bed-rid sybils; he has invoked the 
spirits of the air ; he has conversed with the living and 
the dead, and let them tell their story their own way; and 
by borrowing of others, has enriched his own genius with 
everlasting variety, truth, and freedom. He has taken his 
materials from the original, authentic sources, in large 
concrete masses, and not tampered with or too much frit- 
tered them away. He is only the amanuensis of truth and 
history. It is impossible to say how fine his writings in 
consequence are, unless we could describe how fine nature 
is. All that portion of the history of his country that he 
has touched upon (wide as the scope is) the manners, 
the personages, the events, the scenery, lives over again 

227 



228 English Literature 

in his volumes. Nothing is wanting— the ilhision is com- 
plete. There is a hurtling in the air, a trampling of feet 
upon the ground, as these perfect representations of human 
character or fanciful belief come thronging back upon our 
imaginations. We will merely recall a few of the subjects 
-of his pencil to the reader's recollection ; for nothing we 
could add, by way of note or commendation, could make 
the impression more vivid. 

There is (first and foremost, because the earliest of our 
acquaintance) the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind- 
hearted, whimsical, pedantic; and Flora Maclvor (whom 
even we forgive for her Jacobitism), the fierce Vich Ian 
Vohr, and Evan Dhu, constant in death, and Davie Gellatly 
roasting his eggs or turning his rhymes with restless volu- 
bility, and the two stag-hounds that met Waverley, as fine 
as ever Titian painted, or Paul Veronese : — then there is 
old Balfour of Burley, brandishing his sword and his Bible 
with fire-eyed fury, trying a fall with the insolent, gigantic 
Bothwell at the 'Change-house, and vanquishing him at the 
noble battle of Loudon-hill; there is Bothwell hirriself, 
drawn to the life, proud, cruel, selfish, profligate, but with 
the love-letters of the gentle Alice (written thirty years 
before), and his verses to her memory found in his pocket 
after his death: in the same volume of Old Mortality is 
that lone figure, like a figure in Scripture, of the woman 
sitting on the stone at the turning to the mountain, to warn 
Burley that there is a lion in his path; and the fawning 
Claverhouse, beautiful as a panther, smooth-looking, blood- 
spotted; and the fanatics, Macbriar and Mucklewrath, 
crazed with zeal and sufferings ; and the inflexible Morton, 
and the faithful Edith, who refused to '' give her hand to 
another while her heart was with her lover in the deep and 
dead sea." And in the Heart of Mid Lothian we have Efiie 
Deans (that sweet, faded flower) and Jeanie, her more than 



Sir Walter Scott 229 

sister, and old David Deans, the patriarch of St. Leonard's 
Crags, and Butler, and Dumbiedikes, eloquent in his silence, 
and Mr. Bartoline Saddle-tree and his prudent helpmate, 
and Porteous swinging in the wind, and Madge Wildfire, 
full of finery and madness, and her ghastly mother. — Again, 
there is Meg Merrilies, standing on her rock, stretched on 
her bier with " her head to the east," and Dirk Hatterick 
(equal to Shakspeare's Master Barnardine), and Glossin, 
the soul of an attorney, and Dandy Dinmont, with his 
terrier-pack and his pony Dumple, and the fiery Colonel 
Mannering, and the modish old counsellor Pleydell, and 
Dominie Sampson,^ an<^ Rob Roy (like the eagle in his 
eyry), and Baillie Nicol Jarvie, and the inimitable Major 
Galbraith, and Rashleigh Osbaldistone, and Die Vernon, the 
best of secret-keepers ; and in the Antiquary, the ingenious 
and abstruse Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, and the old beadsman 
Edie Ochiltree, and that preternatural figure of oil Edith 
Elspeith, a living shadow, in whom the lamp of life had 
been long extinguished, had it not been fed by remorse and 
''thick-coming" recollections; and that striking picture of 
the effects of feudal tyranny and fiendish pride, the un- 
happy Earl of Glenallan ; and the Black Dwarf, and his 
friend Habbie of the Heughfoot (the cheerful hunter), and 
his cousin Grace Armstrong, fresh and laughing like the 
morning; and the Children of the Mist, and the baying of 
the bloodhound that tracks their steps at a distance (the 
hollow echoes are in our ears now), and Amy and her hap- 
less love, and the villain Varney, and the deep voice of 
George of Douglas — and the immoveable Balafre, and 
Master Oliver the Barber in Quentin Durward — and the 
quaint humour of the Fortunes of Nigel, and the comic 

* Perhaps the finest scene in all these novels, is that where the 
Dominie meets his pupil, Miss Lucy, the morning after her brother's 
arrival. 



230 English Literature 

spirit of Peveril of the Peak — and the fine old English 
romance of Ivanhoe. What a list of names ! What a host 
of associations! What a thing is human life! What a 
power is that of genius ! What a world of thought and 
feeling is thus rescued from oblivion ! How many hours 
of heartfelt satisfaction has our author given to the gay 
and thoughtless ! How many sad hearts has he soothed in 
pain and solitude ! It is no wonder that the public repay 
with lengthened applause and gratitude the pleasure they 
receive. He writes as fast as they can read, and he does 
not write himself down. He is always in the public eye, 
and we do not tire of him. His worst is better than any 
other person's best. His hack-grounds (and his later works 
are little else but back-grounds capitally made out) are 
more attractive than the principal figures and most com- 
plicated actions of other writers. His works (taken to- 
gether) are almost like a new edition of human nature. 
This is indeed to be an author! 

The political bearing of the Scotch Novels has been a 
considerable recommendation to them. They are a relief 
to the mind, rarefied as it has been with modern philosophy, 
and heated with ultra-radicalism. At a time also, when 
we bid fair to revive the principles of the Stuarts, it is 
interesting to bring us acquainted with their persons and 
misfortunes. The candour of Sir Walter's historic pen 
levels our bristling prejudices on this score, and sees fair 
play between Roundheads and Cavaliers, between Protestant 
and Papist. He is a writer reconciling all the diversities 
of human nature to the reader. He does not enter into 
the distinctions of hostile sects or parties, but treats of the 
strength or the infirmity of the human mind, of the virtues 
or vices of the human breast, as they are to be found 
blended in the whole race of mankind. Nothing can show 
more handsomely or be more gallantly executed. There 



Sir Waltep Scott 231 

was a talk at one time that our author was about to take 
Guy Faux for the subject of one of his novels, in order to 
put a more liberal and humane construction on the Gun- 
powder Plot than our " No Popery " prejudices have hith- 
erto permitted. Sir Walter is a professed clariiier of the 
age from the vulgar and still lurking old-EngHsh antipathy 
to Popery and Slavery. Through some odd process of 
servile logic, it should seem, that in restoring the claims of 
the Stuarts by' the courtesy of romance, the House of 
Brunswick are more firmly seated in point of fact, and the 
Bourbons, by collateral reasoning, become legitimate! In 
any other point of view, we cannot possibly conceive how 
Sir Walter imagines '' he has done something to revive the 
declining spirit of loyalty " by these novels. His loyalty is 
founded on zvould-be treason : he props the actual throne 
by the shadow of rebellion. Does he really think of making 
us enamoured of the " good old times " by the faithful and 
harrowing portraits he has drawn of them? Would he 
carry us back to the early stages of barbarism, of clanship, 
of the feudal system as '' a consummation devoutly to be 
wished ? " Is he infatuated enough, or does he so dote 
and drivel over his own slothful and self-willed prejudices, 
as to believe that he will make a single convert to the 
beauty of Legitimacy, that is, of lawless power and savage 
bigotry, when he himself is obliged to apologize for the 
horrors he describes, and even render his descriptions credi- 
ble to the modern reader by referring to the authentic his- 
tory of these delectable times? He is indeed so besotted 
as to the moral of his own story, that he has even the blind- 
ness to go out of his way to have a fling at Mnts and dungs 
(the contemptible ingredients, as he would have us be- 
lieve, of a modern rabble) at the very time when he is 
describing a mob of the twelfth century — a mob (one 
should think) after the writer's own heart, without one 



232 English Literature 

particle of modern philosophy or revolutionary politics in 
their composition, who were to a man, to a hair, just what 
priests, and kings, and nobles let them be, and who were 
collected to witness (a spectacle proper to the times) the 
burning of the lovely Rebecca at a stake for a sorceress, 
because she was a Jewess, beautiful and innocent, and the 
consequent victim of insane bigotry and unbridled prof- 
ligacy. And it is at this moment (when the heart is kindled 
and bursting with indignation at the revolting abuses of 
self-constituted power) that Sir Walter stops the press to 
have a sneer at the people, and to put a spoke (as he 
thinks) in the wheel of upstart innovation! This is what 
he " calls backing his friends " — it is thus he administers 
charms and philtres to our love of Legitimacy, makes us 
conceive a horror of all reform, civil, political, or religious, 
and would fain put down the Spirit of the Age. The author 
of Waverley might just as well get up and make a speech 
at a dinner at Edinburgh, abusing Mr. Mac-Adam for his 
improvements in the roads, on the ground that they were 
nearly impassable in many places " sixty years since ; " or 
object to Mr. Peel's Police-Bill, by insisting that Hounslow- 
Heath was formerly a scene of greater interest and terror 
to highwaymen and travellers, and cut a greater figure in 
the Newgate Calendar than it does at present. — Oh ! Wick- 
lif¥, Luther, Hampden, Sidney, Somers, mistaken Whigs, 
and thoughtless Reformers in religion and politics, and all 
ye, whether poets or philosophers, heroes or sages, in- 
ventors of arts or sciences, patriots, benefactors of the 
human race, enhghteners and civiHsers of the world, who 
have (so far) reduced opinion to reason, and power to law, 
who are the cause that we no longer burn witches and 
heretics at slow fires, that the thumb-screws are no longer 
applied by ghastly, smiling judges, to extort confession of 
imputed crimes from sufferers for conscience sake; that 



Sir Walter Scott 233 

men are no longer strung up like acorns on trees without 
judge or jury, or hunted like wild beasts through thickets 
and glens, who have abated the cruelty of priests, the pride 
of nobles, the divinity of kings in former times ; to whom 
we owe it, that we no longer wear round our necks the 
collar of Gurth the swineherd, and of Wamba the jester; 
that the castles of great lords are no longer the dens of 
banditti, whence they issue with fire and sword to lay waste 
the land ; that we no longer expire in loathsome dungeons 
without knowing the cause, or have our right hands struck 
off for raising them in self-defence against wanton insult; 
that we can sleep without fear of being burnt in our beds, 
or travel without making our wills ; that no Amy Robsarts 
are thrown down trap-doors by Richard Varneys with im- 
punity; that no Red-Reiver of Westburn-Flat sets fire to 
peaceful cottages ; that no Claverhouse signs cold-blooded 
death-warrants in sport ; that we have no Tristan the Her- 
mit, or Petit-Andre, crawling near us, like spiders, and 
making our flesh creep, and our hearts sicken within us at 
every movement of our lives — ye who have produced this 
change in the face of nature and society, return to earth 
once more, and beg pardon of Sir Walter and his patrons, 
who sigh at not being able to undo all that you have done ! 
Leaving this question, there are two other remarks which 
we wished to make on the Novels. The one was, to express 
our admiration of the good-nature of the mottos, in which 
the author has taken occasion to remember and quote almost 
every living author (whether illustrious or obscure) but 
himself — an indirect argument in favour of the general 
opinion as to the source from which they spring — and the 
other was, to hint our astonishment at the innumerable and 
incessant instances of bad and slovenly English in them, 
more, we believe, than in any other works now printed. 
We should think the writer could not possibly read the 



234 ' English Literature 

manuscript after he has once written it, or overlook the 
press. 

If there were a writer, who '' born for the universe " — 

" Narrow'd his mind, 

And to party gave up what was meant for mankind " 

who, from the height of his genius looking abroad into 
nature, and scanning the recesses of the human heart, 
" winked and shut his apprehension up " to every thought 
and purpose that tended to the future good of mankind — 
who, raised by affluence, the reward of successful industry, 
and by the voice of fame above the want of any but the 
most honourable patronage, stooped to the unworthy arts 
of adulation, and abetted the views of the great with the 
pettifogging feelings of the meanest dependant on office — 
who, having secured the admiration of the public (with the 
probable reversion of immortality), showed no respect for 
himself, for that genius that had raised him to distinction, 
for that nature which he trampled under foot — who, amia- 
ble, frank, friendly, manly in private life, was seized with 
the dotage of age and the fury of a woman, the instant 
politics were concerned — who reserved all his candour and 
comprehensiveness of view for history, and vented his 
littleness, pique, resentment, bigotry, and intolerance on 
his contemporaries — who took the wrong side, and de- 
fended it by unfair means — who, the moment his own 
interest or the prejudices of others interfered, seemed to 
forget all that was due to the pride of intellect, to the sense 
of manhood — who, praised, admired by men of all parties 
alike, repaid the public liberality by striking a secret and 
envenomed blow at the reputation of every one who was 
not the ready tool of power — who strewed the slime of 
rankling malice and mercenary scorn over the bud and 
promise of genius, because it was not fostered in the hot- 



Sir Walter Scott 235 

bed of corruption, or warped by the trammels of servility — 
who supported the w^orst abuses of authority in the worst 
spirit — who joined a gang of desperadoes to spread 
calumny, contempt, infamy, wherever they were merited 
by honesty or talent on a different side — who officiously 
undertook to decide public questions by private insinua- 
tions, to prop the throne by nicknames, and the altar by 
lies — who being (by common consent), the finest, the most 
humane and accomplished writer of his age, associated him- 
self with and encouraged the lowest panders of a venal 
press; deluging, nauseating the public mind with the offal 
and garbage of Billingsgate abuse and vulgar slang; show- 
ing no remorse, no relenting or compassion towards the 
victims of this nefarious and organized system of party- 
proscription, carried on under the mask of literary criti- 
cism and fair discussion, insulting the misfortunes of some, 
and trampling on the early grave of others — 

"Who would not grieve if such a man there be? 
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?" . 

But we believe there is no other age or country in the 
world (but ours), in which such genius could have been 
so degraded! 



XV 
LORD BYRON 

Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott are among writers 
now living * the two, who would carry away a majority of 
suffrages as the greatest geniuses of the age. The former 
would, perhaps, obtain the preference with fine gentlemen 
and ladies (squeamishness apart) — the latter with the 
critics and the vulgar. We shall treat of them in the same 
connection, partly on account of their distinguished pre- 
eminence, and partly because they afford a complete con- 
trast to each other. In their poetry, in their prose, in their 
politics, and in their tempers, no two men can be more 
unlike. 

I£ Sir Walter Scott may be thought by some to have 
been 

" Born universal heir to all humanity," 

it is plain Lord Byron can set up no such pretension. He 
is, in a striking degree, the creature of his own will. He 
holds no communion with his kind ; but stands alone, with- 
out mate or fellow — 

"As if a man were author of himself, 
And owned no other kin." 

He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not 
more by elevation than distance. He is seated on a lofty 
eminence, '' cloud-capt," or reflecting the last rays of set- 
ting suns; and in his poetical moods reminds us of the 

*This essay was written just before Lord Byron's death. 
236 



Lord Byron 237 

fabled Titans, retired to a ridgy steep, playing on their 
Pan's-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things in 
their hands with haughty indifference. He raises his sub- 
ject to himself, or tramples on it; he neither stoops to, nor 
loses himself in it. He exists not by sympathy, but by 
antipathy. He scorns all things, even himself. Nature 
must come to him to sit for her picture — he does not go 
to her. She must consult his time, his convenience, and his 
humour ; and wear a sombre or a fantastic garb, or his 
Lordship turns his back upon her. There is no ease, no 
unaffected simplicity of manner, no " golden mean." All 
is strained, or petulant in the extreme. His thoughts are 
sphered and crystalline ; his style " prouder than when blue 
Iris bends ; " his spirit fiery, impatient, wayward, indefatiga- 
ble. Instead of taking his impressions from without, in 
entire and almost unimpaired masses, he moulds them ac- 
cording to his own temperament, and heats the materials 
of his imagination in the furnace of his passions. — Lord 
Byron's verse glows like a flame, consuming everything in 
its way ; Sir Walter Scott's glides like a river, clear, gentle, 
harmless. The poetry of the first scorches, that of the last 
scarcely warms. The Hght of the one proceeds from an 
internal source, ensanguined, sullen, fixed ; the other reflects 
the hues of Heaven, or the face of nature, glancing vivid 
and various. The productions of the Northern Bard have 
the rust and the freshness of antiquity about them ; those 
of the Noble Poet cease to startle from their extreme am- 
bition of novelty, both in style and matter. Sir Walter's 
rhymes are " silly sooth " — 

" And dally with the innocence of thought, 
Like the old age " — 

his Lordship's Muse spurns the olden time, and affects all 
the supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. 



238 English Literature 

The object of the one writer is to restore us to truth and 
nature: the other chiefly thinks how he shall display his 
own power, or vent his spleen, or astonish the reader either 
by starting new subjects and trains of speculation, or by 
expressing old ones in a more striking and emphatic manner 
than they have been expressed before. He cares little what 
it is he says, so that he can say it differently from others. 
This may account for the charges of plagiarism which have 
been repeatedly brought against the Noble Poet — if he can 
borrow an image or sentiment from another, and heighten 
it by an epithet or an allusion of greater force and beauty 
than is to be found in the original passage, he thinks he 
shows his superiority of execution in this in a more marked 
manner than if the first suggestion had been his own. It 
is not the value of the observation itself he is solicitous 
about ; but he wishes to shine by contrast — even nature only 
serves as a foil to set off his style. He therefore takes the 
thoughts of others (whether contemporaries or not) out 
of their mouths, and is content to make them his own, 
to set his stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more 
meretricious gloss, a higher relief, a greater loftiness of 
tone, and a characteristic inveteracy of purpose. Even in 
those collateral ornaments of modern style, slovenliness, 
abruptness, and eccentricity (as well as in terseness and 
significance). Lord Byron, when he pleases, defies competi- 
tion and surpasses all his contemporaries. Whatever he 
does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner 
than any one else — he lounges with extravagance, and 
yawns so as to alarm the reader! Self-will, passion, the 
love of singularity, a disdain of himself and of others 
(with a conscious sense that this is among the ways and 
means of procuring admiration) are the proper categories 
of his mind : he is a lordly writer, is above his own reputa- 
tion, and condescends to the Muses with a scornful grace! 



Lord Byron 239 

Lord Byron, who in his poHtics is a liberal, in his genius 
is haughty and aristocratic : Walter Scott, who is an aristo- 
crat in principle, is popular in his writings, and is (as it 
were) equally servile to nature and to opinion. The genius 
of Sir Walter is essentially imitative, or " denotes a fore- 
gone conclusion : " that of Lord Byron is self-dependent ; 
or at least requires no aid, is governed by no law, but the 
impulses of its own will. We confess, however much we 
may admire independence of feeling and erectness of spirit 
in general or practical questions, yet in works of genius 
we prefer him who bows to the authority of nature, who 
appeals to actual objects, to mouldering superstitions, to 
history, observation, and tradition, before him who only 
consults the pragmatical and restless workings of his own 
breast, and gives them out as oracles to the world. We 
like a writer (whether poet or prose-writer) who takes in 
_(or is willing to take in) the range of half the universe 
in feeling, character, description, much better than we do 
one who obstinately and invariably shuts himself up in 
the Bastile of his own ruling passions. In short, we had 
rather be Sir Walter Scott (meaning thereby the Author 
of Waverley) than Lord Byron, a hundred times over. And 
for the reason just given, namely, that he casts his descrip- 
tions in the mould of nature, ever-varying, never tiresome, 
always interesting and always instructive, instead of casting 
them constantly in the mould of his own individual impres- 
sions. He gives us man as he is, or as he was, in almost 
every variety of situation, action, and feeling. Lord Byron 
makes man after his own image, woman after his own 
heart ; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding 
slave ; he gives us the misanthrope and the voluptuary by 
turns ; and with these two characters, burning or melting in 
their own fires, he makes out everlasting centos of himself. 
He hangs the cloud, the film of his existence over all out- 



240 English Literature 

ward things — sits in the centre of his thoughts, and enjoys 
dark night, bright day, the ghtter and the gloom " in cell 
monastic " — we see the mournful pall, the crucifix, the 
death's-heads, the faded chaplet of flowers, the gleaming 
tapers, the agonized brow, of genius, the wasted form of 
beauty — but we are still imprisoned in a dungeon, a curtain 
intercepts our view, we do not breathe freely the air of 
nature or of our own thoughts — the other admired author 
draws aside the curtain, and the veil of egotism is rent, 
and he shows us the crowd of living men and women, the 
endless groups, the landscape back-ground, the cloud and 
the rainbow, and enriches our imaginations and relieves 
one passion by another, and expands and lightens reflec- 
tion, and takes away that tightness at the breast which 
arises from thinking or wishing to think that there is noth- 
ing in the world out of a man's self ! — In this point of view, 
the Author of Waverley is one of the greatest teachers of 
morality that ever lived, by emancipating the mind from 
petty, narrow, and bigotted prejudices: Lord Byron is the 
greatest pamperer of those prejudices, by seeming to think 
there is nothing else worth encouraging but the seeds or 
the full luxuriant growth of dogmatism and self-conceit. 
In reading the Scotch Novels, we never think about the 
author, except from a feeUng of curiosity respecting our 
unknown benefactor : in reading Lord Byron's works, he 
himself is never absent from our minds. The colouring of 
Lord Byron's style, however rich and dipped in Tyrian 
dyes, is nevertheless opaque, is in itself an object of delight 
and wonder : Sir Walter Scott's is perfectly transparent. 
In studying the one, you seem to gaze at the figures cut in 
stained glass, which exclude the view beyond, and where 
the pure light of Heaven is only a means of setting off the 
gorgeousness of art : in reading the other, you look through 
a noble window at the clear and varied landscape without. 



Lord Byron 241 

Or to sum up the distinction in one word, Sir Walter Scott 
is the most dramatic writer now living; and Lord Byron 
is the least so. — It would be difficult to imagine that the 
Author of Waverley is in the smallest degree a pedant; as 
it would be hard to persuade ourselves that the Author 
of Childe Harold and Don Juan is not a coxcomb, though 
a provoking and subHme one. In this decided preference 
given to Sir Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly 
include the prose-works of the former ; for we do not think 
his poetry alone by any means entitles him to that prece- 
dence. Sir Walter in his poetry, though pleasing and nat- 
ural, is a comparative trifler: it is in his anonymous pro- 
ductions that he has shown himself for what he is ! — 

Intensity is the great and prominent distinction of Lord 
Byron's writings. He seldom gets beyond force of style, 
nor has he produced any regular work or masterly whole. 
He does not prepare any plan beforehand, nor revise and 
retouch what he has written with polished accuracy. His 
only object seems to be to stimulate himself and his readers 
for the moment — to keep both alive, to drive away ennui, 
to substitute a feverish and irritable state of excitement 
for listless indolence or even calm enjoyment. For this 
purpose he pitches on any subject at random without much 
thought or dehcacy; — he is only impatient to begin — and 
takes care to adorn and enrich it as he proceeds with 
" thoughts that breathe and words that burn." He com- 
poses (as he himself has said) whether he is in the bath, in 
his study, or on horseback — he writes as habitually as 
others talk or think — and whether we have the inspiration 
of the Muse or not, we always find the spirit of the man 
of genius breathing from his verse. He grapples with 
his subject, and moves, penetrates, and animates it by the 
electric force of his own feelings. He is often monotonous, 
extravagant, offensive ; but he is never dull, or tedious, but 



242 English Literature 

when he writes prose. Lord Byron does not exhibit a new 
view of nature, or raise insignificant objects into impor- 
tance by the romantic associations with which he surrounds 
them; but generally (at least) takes common-place thoughts 
and events and endeavours to express them in stronger and 
statelier language than others. His poetry stands like a 
Martello tower by the side of his subject. He does not, 
like Mr. Wordsworth, lift poetry from the ground, or 
create a sentiment out of nothing. He does not describe 
a daisy or a periwinkle, but the cedar or the cypress : not 
'' poor men's cottages, but princes' palaces." His Childe 
Harold contains a lofty and impassioned review of the great 
events of history, of the mighty objects left as wrecks of 
time, but he dwells chiefly on what is familiar to the mind 
of every schoolboy; has brought out few new traits of 
feeling or thought ; and has done no more than justice to 
the reader's preconceptions by the sustained force and bril- 
liancy of his style and imagery. 

Lord Byron's earlier productions, Lara, the Corsair, etc. 
were wild and gloomy romances, put into rapid and shining 
verse. They discover the madness of poetry, together with 
the inspiration: sullen, moody, capricious, fierce, inexora- 
ble, gloating on beauty, thirsting for revenge, hurrying from 
the extremes of pleasure to pain, but with nothing perma- 
nent, nothing healthy or natural. The gaudy decorations 
and the morbid sentiments remind one of flowers strewed 
over the face of death! In his Childe Harold (as has been 
just observed) he assumes a lofty and philosophic'tone, and 
" reasons high of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and 
fate." He takes the highest points in the history of the 
world, and comments on them from a more commanding 
eminence : he shows us the crumbling monuments of time, 
he invokes the great names, the mighty spirit of antiquity. 
The universe is changed into a stately mausoleum : — in sol- 



Lord Byron 243 

emn measures he chaunts a hymn to fame. Lord Byron 
has strength and elevation enough to fill up the moulds of 
our classical and time-hallowed recollections, and to re- 
kindle the earliest aspirations of the mind after greatness 
and true glory with a pen of fire. The names of Tasso, 
of Ariosto, of Dante, of Cincinnatus, of Caesar, of Scipio, 
lose nothing of 'their pomp or their lustre in his hands, 
and when he begins and continues a strain of panegyric on 
such subjects, we indeed sit down with him to a banquet 
of rich praise, brooding over imperishable glories, 

" Till Contemplation has her fill." 

Lord Byron seems to cast himself indignantly from '' this 
bank and shoal of time," or the frail tottering bark that 
bears up modern reputation, into the huge sea of ancient 
renown, and to revel there with untired, outspread plume. 
Even this in him is spleen — his contempt of his contempora- 
ries makes him turn back to the lustrous past, or project 
himself forward to the dim future ! — Lord Byron's trage- 
dies, Faliero,"^ Sardanapalus, etc. are not equal to his other 
works. They want the essence of the drama. They abound 
in speeches and descriptions, such as he himself might 
make either to himself or others, lolling on his couch of 
a morning, but do not carry the reader out of the poet's 
mind to the scenes and events recorded. They have neither 
action, character, nor interest, but are a sort of gossamer 
tragedies, spun out, and glittering, and spreading a flimsy 
veil over the face of nature. Yet he spins them on. Of 
all that he has done in this way, the Heaven and Earth (the 
same subject as Mr. Moore's Loves of the Angels) is the 

* " Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero 

My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain." 

Don Juan, Canto XI. 



244 English Literature 

best. We prefer it even to Manfred. Manfred is merely 
himself with a fancy-drapery on : but in the dramatic frag- 
ment published in the Liberal, the space between Heaven 
and Earth, the stage on which his characters have to pass 
to and fro, seems to fill his Lordship's imagination; and 
the Deluge, which he has so finely described, may be said 
to have drowned all his own idle humours. 

We must say we think little of our author's turn for 
satire. His " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " is 
dogmatical and insolent, but without refinement or point. 
He calls people names, and tries to transfix a character 
with an epithet, which does not stick, because it has no 
other foundation than his own petulance and spite; or he 
endeavours to degrade by alluding to some circumstance of 
external situation. He says of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, 
that '' it is his aversion." That may be : but whose fault is 
it ? This is the satire of a lord, who is accustomed to have 
all his whims or dislikes taken for gospel, and who cannot 
be at the pains to do more than signify his contempt or 
displeasure. If a great man meets with a rebuff which he 
does not like, he turns on his heel, and this passes for a 
repartee. The Noble Author says of a celebrated barrister 
and critic, that he was " born in a garret sixteen stories 
high." The insinuation is not true ; or if it were, it is low. 
The allusion degrades the person who makes it, not him 
to whom it is applied. This is also the satire of a person 
of birth and quality, who measures all merit by external 
rank, that is, by his own standard. So his Lordship, in 
a " Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review," 
addresses him fifty times as '' my dear Robarts; " nor is 
there any other wit in the article. This is surely a mere 
assumption of superiority from his Lordship's rank, and is 
the sort of quizzing he might use to a person who came to 
hire himself as a valet to him at Long's — the waiters might 



Lord Byron 245 

laugh, the pubHc will not. In like manner, in the con- 
troversy about Pope, he claps Mr. Bowles on the back with 
a coarse facetious familiarity, as if he were his chaplain 
whom he had invited to dine with him, or was about to 
present to a benefice. The reverend divine might submit 
to the obHgation, but he has no occasion to subscribe to 
the jest. If it is a jest that Mr. Bowles should be a parson, 
and Lord Byron a peer, the world knew this before; there 
was no need to write a pamphlet to prove it. 

The Don Juan indeed has great power; but its power is 
owing to the force of the serious writing, and to the oddity 
of the contrast between that and the flashy passages with 
which it is interlarded. From the sublime to the ridiculous 
there is but one step. You laugh and are surprised that any 
one should turn round and travestie himself : the drollery is 
in the utter discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He makes 
virtue serve as a foil to vice; dandyism is (for want of any 
other) a variety of genius. A classical intoxication is fol- 
lowed by the splashing of soda-water, by frothy effusions 
of ordinary bile. After the lightning and the hurricane, we 
are introduced to the interior of the cabin and the contents 
of the wash-hand basins. The solemn hero of tragedy plays 
Scrub in the farce. This is " very tolerable and not to be 
endured." The Noble Lord is almost the only writer who 
has prostituted his talents in this way. He hallows in order 
to desecrate; takes a pleasure in defacing the images of 
beauty his hands have wrought; and raises our hopes and 
our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash them to the 
earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually 
from the very height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm for 
genius or virtue is thus turned into a jest by the very person 
who has kindled it, and who thus fatally quenches the spark 
of both. It is not that Lord Byron is sometimes serious 
and sometimes trifling, sometimes profligate, and some- 



246 English Literature 

times moral — but when he is most serious and most moral, 
he is only preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader by 
putting a pitiful hoax upon him. This is a most unac- 
countable anomaly. It is as if the eagle were to build its 
eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were seen soaring to 
the mid-day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but 
one would not wish or expect it to occur more than once ! "^ 
In fact. Lord Byron is the spoiled child of fame as well 
as fortune. He has taken a surfeit of popularity, and is not 
contented to deHght, unless he can shock the pubHc. He 
would force them to admire in spite of decency and 
common-sense — he would have them read what they would 
read in no one but himself, or he would not give a rush 
for their applause. He is to be " a chartered libertine," 
from whom insults are favours, whose contempt is to be 
a new incentive to admiration. His Lordship is hard to 
please : he is equally averse to notice or neglect, enraged 
at censure and scorning praise. He tries the patience of 
the town to the very utmost, and when they show signs 
of weariness or disgust, threatens to discard them. He 
says he will write on, whether he is read or not. He would 
never write another page, if it were not to court popular 
applause, or to affect a superiority over it. In this respect 
also. Lord Byron presents a striking contrast to Sir Walter 
Scott. The latter takes what part of the public favour falls 
to his share, without grumbHng (to be sure, he has no 
reason to complain) ; the former is always quarrelling with 
the world about his modicum of applause, the spolia opima 
of vanity, and ungraciously throwing the offerings of in- 
cense heaped on his shrine back in the faces of his admirers. 
Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of 

* This censure applies to the first cantos of Don Juan much more 
than to the last. It has been called a Tristram Shandy in rhyme: 
it is rather a poem written about itself. 



Lord Byron 247 

Waverley, all is fair and natural and above-board: he never 
outrages the public mind. He introduces no anomalous 
character: broaches no staggering opinion. If he goes back 
to old prejudices and superstitions as a relief to the modern 
reader, while Lord Byron floats on swelling paradoxes — 

" Like proud seas under him ; " 

if the one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the 
other panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very 
edge of extreme and licentious speculation, and breaks his 
neck over it. Crossness and levity are the playthings of 
his pen. It is a ludicrous circumstance that he should have 
dedicated his Cain to the worthy Baronet! Did the latter 
ever acknowledge the obligation? We are not nice, not 
very nice; but we do not particularly approve those subjects 
that shine chiefly from their rottenness : nor do we wish 
to see the Muses dressed out in the flounces of a false or 
questionable philosophy, like Portia and Nerissa in the garb 
of Doctors of Law. We like metaphysics as well as Lord 
Byron; but not to see them making flowery speeches, nor 
dancing a measure in the fetters of verse. We have as 
good as hinted, that his Lordship's poetry consists mostly 
of a tissue of superb common-places; even his paradoxes 
are common- place. They are familiar in the schools : they 
are only new and striking in his dramas and stanzas, by 
being out of place. In a word, we think that poetry moves 
best within the circle of nature and received opinion : specu- 
lative theory and subtle casuistry are forbidden ground to 
it. But Lord Byron often wanders into this ground wan- 
tonly, wilfully, and unwarrantably. The only apology we 
can conceive for the spirit of some of Lord Byron's 
writings, is the spirit of some of those opposed to him. 
They would provoke a man to write anything. " Farthest 
from them is best." The extravagance and license of the 



k 



248 English Literature 

one seems a proper antidote to the bigotry and narrowness 
of the other. The first Vision of Judgment was a set-off 
to the second, though 

" None but itself could be its parallel." 

Perhaps the chief cause of most of Lord Byron's errors 
is, that he is that anomaly in letters and in society, a Noble 
Poet. It is a double privilege, almost too much for hu- 
manity. He has all the pride of birth and genius. The 
strength of his imagination leads him to indulge in fantastic 
opinions ; the elevation of his rank sets censure at defiance. 
He becomes a pampered egotist. He has a seat in the 
House of Lords, a niche in the Temple of Fame. Every- 
day mortals, opinions, things, are not good enough for him 
to touch or think of. A mere nobleman is, in his estimation, 
but " the tenth transmitter of a foolish face: " a mere man 
of genius is no better than a worm. His Muse is also a lady 
of quality. The people are not polite enough for him : the 
Court is not sufficiently intellectual. He hates the one and 
despises the other. By hating and despising others, he does 
not learn to be satisfied with himself. A fastidious man 
soon grows querulous and splenetic. If there is nobody but 
ourselves to come up to our idea of fancied perfection, we 
easily get tired of our idol. When a man is tired of what 
he is, by a natural perversity he sets up for what he is not. 
If he is a poet, he pretends to be a metaphysician : if he is 
a patrician in rank and feeling, he would fain be one of 
the people. His ruling motive is not the love of the people, 
but of distinction ; — not of truth, but of singularity. He 
patronises men of letters out of vanity, and deserts them 
from caprice, or from the advice of friends. He embarks 
in an obnoxious publication to provoke censure, and leaves 
it to shift for itself for fear of scandal. We do not like 



Lord Byron 249 

Sir Walter's gratuitous servility : we like Lord Byron's pre- 
posterous liberalism little better. He may affect the prin- 
ciples of equality, but he resumes his privilege of peerage, 
upon occasion. His Lordship has made great offers of 
service to the Greeks — money and horses. He is at present 
in Cephalonia, waiting the event ! 

We had written thus far when news came of the death 
of Lord Byron, and put an end at once to a strain of some- 
what peevish invective, which w^as intended to meet his eye, 
not to insult his memory. Had we known that we were 
writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different 
feeling. As it is, we think it better and more like himself, 
to let what we had written stand, than to take up our leaden 
shafts, and try to melt them into " tears of sensibility," or 
mould them into dull praise, and an affected show of can- 
dour. We were not silent during the author's life-time, 
either for his reproof or encouragement (such as we could 
give, and he did not disdain to accept) nor can we now 
turn undertakers' men to fix the glittering plate upon his 
coffin, or fall into the procession of popular woe. — Death 
cancels every thing but truth; and strips a man of every 
thing but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canon- 
ization. It makes the meanest of us sacred — it installs the 
poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death 
is the great assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his 
touch the drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, 
the gross, and mingle with the dust — the finer and more 
ethereal part mounts with the winged spirit to watch over 
our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We 
consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish 
the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and 
fondness. Nothing could show the real superiority of 
genius in a more striking point of view than the idle con- 



250 English Literature 

tests and the public indifference about the place of Lord 
Byron's interment, whether in Westminster Abbey or his 
own family- vault. A king must have a coronation — a noble- 
man a funeral-procession. — The man is nothing without the 
pageant. The poet's cemetery is the human mind, in which 
he sows the seeds of never-ending thought — his monument 
is to be found in his works : 

" Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven ; 
No pyramids set off his memory, 
But the eternal substance of his greatness." 

Lord Byron is dead: he also died a martyr to his zeal in 
the cause of freedom, for the last, best hopes of man. Let 
that be his excuse and his epitaph ! 



XVI 
ON POETRY IN GENERAL 

The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, 
that it is the natural impression of any object or event, 
by its vividness exciting an involuntary movement of im- 
agination and passion, and producing, by sympathy, a cer- 
tain modulation of the voice, or sounds, expressing it. 

In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject- 
matter of it, next of the forms of expression to which it 
gives birth, and afterwards of its connection with harmony 
of sound. 

Poetry is the language of the imagination and the pas- 
sions. It relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or 
pain to the human mind. It comes home to the bosoms and 
businesses of men ; for nothing but what so comes home 
to them in the most general and intelligible shape, can be 
a subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language 
which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has 
a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for him- 
self, or for any thing else. It is not a mere frivolous 
accomplishment, (as some persons have been led to im- 
agine) the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or 
leisure hours — it has been the study and delight of mankind 
in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something 
to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables 
with like endings : but wherever there is a sense of beauty, 
or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the 
sea, in the growth of a flower that '' spreads its sweet 
leaves to the air and dedicates its beauty to the sun," — 

251 



252 English Literature 

l/ there is poetry, in its birth. If history is a grave study, 
poetry may be said to be a graver : its materials he deeper, 
and are spread v\^ider. History treats, for the most part, 
of the cumbrous and unwieldy masses of things, the empty 
cases in which the affairs of the world are packed, under 
the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from 
century to century : but there is no thought or feeling that 
can have entered into the mind of man, which he would 
be eager to communicate to others, or which they would 
listen to with delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. 
It is not a branch of authorship : it is " the stuff of which 
our life is made." The rest is " mere oblivion," a dead 
letter: for all that is worth remembering in life, is the 
poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry, 
hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, 
wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry. Poetry 
is that fine particle within us, that expands, rarefies, refines, 
raises our whole being : without it " man's life is poor as 
beast's." Man is a poetical animal : and those of us who 
do not study the principles of poetry, act upon them all 
our lives, like Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who had 
always spoken prose without knowing it. The child is a 
poet in fact, when he first plays at hide-and-seek, or repeats 
the story of Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a 
poet, when he first crowns his mistress with a garland of 
flowers ; the countryman, when he stops to look at the 
rainbow ; the city-apprentice, when he gazes after the Lord- 
Mayor's show ; the miser, when he hugs his gold ; the cour- 
tier, who builds his hopes upon a smile ; the savage, who 
paints his idol with blood ; the slave, who worships a tyrant, 
or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god; — the vain, the 
ambitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the 
coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, 
the young and the old, all live in a world of their own 



On Poetry in General 253 

making; and the poet does no more than describe what all 
the others think and act. If his art is folly and madness, 
it is folly and madness at second hand. " There is warrant 
for it." Poets alone have not " such seething brains, such 
shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cooler reason " 
can. 

" The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 
Are of imagination all compact. 
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; 
The madman. While the lover, all as frantic, 
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. 
The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n; 
And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name. 
Such tricks hath strong imagination." 



If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the 
same. If it is a fiction, made up of what we wish things 
to be, and fancy that they are, because we wish them so, 
there is no other nor better reality. Ariosto has described 
the loves of Angelica and Medoro : but was not Medoro, 
who carved the name of his mistress on the barks of trees, 
as much enamoured of her charms as he? Homer has 
celebrated the anger of Achilles: but was not the hero as 
mad as the poet? Plato banished the poets from his Com- 
monwealth, lest their descriptions of the natural man should 
spoil his mathematical man, who was to be without passions 
and affections, who was neither to laugh nor weep, to feel 
sorrow nor anger, to be cast down nor elated by any thing. 
This was a chimera, however, which never existed but in 
the brain of the inventor ; and Homer's poetical world has 
outlived Plato's philosophical Republic. 

Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but the imagination 



254 English Literature 

and the passions are a part of man's nature. We shape 
things according to our wishes and fancies, without poetry ; 
but poetry is the most emphatical language that can be 
found for those creations of the mind '* which- ecstacy is 
very cunning in." Neither a mere description of natural 
objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however 
distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of 
poetry, without the heightenings of the imagination. The 
light of poetry is not only a direct but also a reflected light, 
that while it shows us the object, throws a sparkling radi- 
ance on all around it: the flame of the passions, com- 
municated to the imagination, reveals to us, as with a flash 
of lightning, the inmost recesses of thought, and penetrates 
our whole being. Poetry represents forms chiefly as they 
suggest other forms ; feelings, as they suggest forms or 
other feelings. Poetry puts a spirit of life and motion into 
the universe. It describes the flowing, not the fixed. It 
does not define the limits of sense, or analyze the distinc- 
tions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the 
imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of 
any object or feeling. The poetical impression of any 
object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power 
that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of 
all Hmit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself 
to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to 
enshrine itself, as it were, in -the highest forms of fancy, 
and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing 
it in the boldest manner, and by the most striking examples 
of the same quality in other instances. Poetry, according 
to Lord Bacon, ior this reason '^ has something divine in 
it, because it raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity, 
by conforming the shows of things to the desires of the 
soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things, as 
reason and history do." It is strictly the language of the 



On Poetry in General 255 

imagination ; and the imagination is that faculty which 
represents objects, not as they are in themselves, but as they 
are moulded by other thoughts and feelings, into an infinite 
variety of shapes and combinations of power. This lan- 
guage is not the less true to nature, because it is false in 
point of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if 
it conveys the impression which the object under the influ- 
ence of passign makes on the mind. Let an .object, for 
instance, be presented to the senses in a state of agitation 
or fear — and the imagination will distort or magnify the 
object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever is most 
proper to encourage the fear. '' Our eyes are made the 
fools " of our other faculties. This is the universal law of 
the imagination, 

"That if it would but apprehend some joy, 
It comprehends some bringer of that joy: 
Or in the night imagining some fear, 
How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear ! " 

When lachimo says of Imogen, 

" The flame o' th' taper 
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids 
To see the enclosed lights " — 

this passionate interpretation of the motion of the flame to 
accord with the speaker's own feelings, is true poetry. The 
lover, equally with the poet, speaks of the auburn tresses 
of his mistress as locks of shining gold, because the least 
tinge of yellow in the hair has, from novelty and a sense 
of personal beauty, a more lustrous effect to the imagina- 
tion than the purest gold. We compare a man of gigantic 
stature to a tower : not that he is any thing like so large, 
but because the excess of his size beyond what we are 
accustomed to expect, or the usual size of things of the 



256 English Literature 

same class, produces by contrast a greater feeling of mag- 
nitude and ponderous strength than another object of ten 
times the same dimensions. The intensity of the feeUng 
makes up for the disproportion of the objects. Things 
are equal to the imagination, which have the power of 
affecting the mind with an equal degree of terror, admira- 
tion, dehght, or love. When Lear calls upon the heavens 
to avenge his cause, '' for they are old like him," there is 
nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime identifica- 
tion of his age with theirs; for there is no other image 
which could do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs 
and his despair ! 

Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of fancy and 
feeling. As in describing natural objects, it impregnates 
sensible impressions with the forms of fancy, so it describes 
the feelings of pleasure or pain, by blending them with the 
strongest movements of passion, and the most striking forms 
of nature. Tragic poetry, which is the most impassioned 
species of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the utmost 
point of sublimity or pathos, by all the force of comparison 
or contrast ; loses the sense of present suffering in the imag- 
inary exaggeration of it ; exhausts the terror or pity by an 
unlimited indulgence of it; grapples with impossibilities in its 
desperate impatience of restraint ; throws us back upon the 
past, forward into the future; brings every moment of our 
being or object of nature in startling review before us; and 
in the rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe 
to the highest contemplations on human life. When Lear 
says, of Edgar, '' Nothing but his unkind daughters could 
have brought him to this ; " what a bewildered amazement, 
what a wrench of the imagination, that cannot be brought 
to conceive of any other cause of misery than that which 
has bowed it down, and absorbs all other sorrow in its 
own ! His sorrow, like a flood, supplies the sources of all 



On Poetry in General 257 

other sorrow. Again, when he exclaims in the mad scene, 
" The Httle dogs and all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, 
see, they bark at me ! " it is passion lending occasion to 
imagination to make every creature in league against him, 
conjuring up ingratitude and insult in their least looked-for 
and most galling shapes, searching every thread and fibre 
of his heart, and finding out the last remaining image of 
respect or attachment in the bottom of his breast, only to 
torture and kill it ! In like manner the " So I am " of 
Cordelia gushes from her heart like a torrent of tears, 
relieving it of a weight of love and of supposed ingratitude, 
which had pressed upon it for years. What a fine return 
of the passion upon itself is that in Othello — with what a 
mingled agony of regret and despair he clings to the last 
traces of departed happiness — when he exclaims, 

" Oh now, for ever 
Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content; 
Farewel the plumed troops and the big wars, 
That make ambition virtue ! Oh farewel ! 
Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, 
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, 
The royal banner, and all quality, 
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war: 
And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats 
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, 
Farewel ! Othello's occupation's gone ! " 

How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like 
a tide in its sounding course, when, in answer to the doubts 
expressed of his returning love, he says, 

" Never, lago. Like to the Pontic sea, 
Whose icy current and compulsive course 
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
To the Propontic and the Hellespont : 
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, 
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, 
Till that a capable and wide revenge 
Swallow them up." — 



258 English Literature 

The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desde- 
mona is at that line, 

" But there where I had garner'd up my heart, 
To be discarded thence ! " — 

One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion 
excites our sympathy without raising our disgust is, that 
in proportion as it sharpens the edge of calamity and dis- 
appointment, it strengthens the desire of good. It en- 
hances our consciousness of the blessing, by making us 
sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of pas- 
sion lays bare and shews us the rich depths of the human 
soul: the whole of our existence, the sum total of our 
passions and pursuits, of that which we desire and that 
which we dread, is brought before us by contrast ; the action 
and re-action are equal ; the keenness of immediate suffering 
only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and a more 
intimate participation with the antagonist world of good; 
makes us drink deeper of the cup of human Hfe; tugs at 
the heart-strings ; loosens the pressure about them ; and 
calls the springs of thought and feeling into play with 
tenfold force. 

Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and 
intellectual part of our nature, as well as of the sensitive — 
of the desire to know, the will to act, and the power to feel ; 
and ought to appeal to these different parts of our con- 
stitution, in order to be perfect. The domestic or prose 
tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural, is in this 
sense the least so, because it appeals almost exclusively to 
one of these faculties, our sensibility. The tragedies of 
Moore and Lillo, for this reason, however affecting at the 
time, oppress and lie like a dead weight upon the mind, 
a load of misery which it is unable to throw off : the tragedy 
of Shakspeare, which Ts- true poetry, stirs our inmost af- 



On Poetry in General 259 

fections ; abstracts evil from itself by combining it with all 
the forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings of 
the heart, and rouses the whole man within us. 

The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry, is not 
anything peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful 
thing. It is not an anomaly of the imagination. It has 
its source and ground-work in the common love of strong 
excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, people flock to see 
a tragedy ; but if there were a public execution in the next 
street, the theatre would very soon be empty. It is not then 
the difference between fiction and reality that solves the 
difficulty. Children are satisfied with the stories of ghosts 
and witches in plain prose : nor do the hawkers of full, true, 
and particular accounts of murders and executions about 
the streets, find it necessary to have them turned into penny 
ballads, before they can dispose of these interesting and 
authentic documents. The grave politician drives a thriving 
trade of abuse and calumnies poured out against those 
whom he makes his enemies for no other end than that he 
may live by them. The popular preacher makes less fre- 
quent mention of heaven than of hell. Oaths and nicknames 
are only a more vulgar sort of poetry or rhetoric. We are 
as fond of indulging our violent passions as of reading 
a description of those of others. We are as prone to make 
a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. 
If it be asked. Why we do so? the best answer will be. 
Because we cannot help it. The sense of power is as strong 
a principle in the mind as the love of pleasure. Objects 
of terror and pity exercise the same despotic control over 
it as those of love or beauty. It is as natural to hate as 
to love, to despise as to admire, to express our hatred or 
contempt, as our love or admiration. 

" Masterless passion sways us to the mood 
Of what it likes or loathes." 



26o English Literature 

Not that we like what we loathe; but we like to indulge 
our hatred and scorn of it ; to dwell upon it, to exasperate 
our idea of it by every refinement of ingenuity and ex- 
travagance of illustration ; to make it a bugbear to ourselves, 
to point it out to others in all the splendour of deformity, 
to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by name, to 
grapple with it in thought, in action, to sharpen our intel- 
lect, to arm our will against it, to know the worst we have 
to contend with, and to contend with it to the utmost. 
Poetry -is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most 
vivid form of expression that can be g-iven to our concep- 
tion of any thing, whether pleasurable or painful, mean 
or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect 
coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling 
we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, 
that gives an instant " satisfaction to the thought." This 
is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and 
tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When Pope says of 
the Lord Mayor's shew, — 

" Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, 
Bu*; lives in Settle's numbers one day more!" 

when Collins makes Danger, with '' limbs of giant mould," 

" Throw him on the steep 
Of some loose hanging rock asleep : " 

when Lear calls out in extreme anguish, 

" Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, 
How much more hideous shew'st in a child 
Than the sea-monster ! " 

— the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the 
other, and of indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied. 
We see the thing ourselves, and shew it to others as we 
feel it to exist, and as, in spite of ourselves, we are com- 



On Poetry in General 261 

pelled to think of it. The imagination, by thus embodying 
and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to the 
indistinct and importunate cravings of the will. — We do not 
wish the thing to be so ; but we wish it to appear such as it 
is. For knowledge is conscious power ; and the mind is no 
longer, in this case, the dupe, though it may be the victim 
of vice or folly. 

Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination 
and the passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, 
can be more absurd than the outcry which has been some- 
times raised by frigid and pedantic critics, for reducing 
the language of poetry to the standard of common sense 
and reason : for the end and use of poetry, '' both at the 
first and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature," 
seen through the medium of passion and imagination, not 
divested of that medium by means of Hteral truth or ab- 
stract reason. The painter of history might as well be 
required to represent the face of a person who has just 
trod upon a serpent with the still-Hfe expression of a 
common portrait, as the poet to describe the most striking 
and vivid impressions which things can be supposed to 
make upon the mind, in the language of common conversa- 
tion. Let who will strip nature of the colours and the 
shapes of fancy, the poet is not bound to do so ; the im- 
pressions of common sense and strong imagination, that is, 
of passion and indifference, cannot be the same, and they 
must have a separate language to do justice to either. Ob- 
jects must strike differently upon the mind, independently 
of what they are in themselves, as long as we have a dif- 
ferent interest in them, as we see them in a different point 
of view, nearer or at a greater distance (morally or phys- 
ically speaking) from novelty, from old acquaintance, from 
our ignorance of them, from our fear of their consequences, 
from contrast, from unexpected likeness. We can no more 



262 English Literature 

take away the faculty of the imagination, than we can see 
all objects without light or shade. Some things must dazzle 
us by their preternatural light; others must hold us in 
suspense, and tempt our curiosity to explore their obscurity. 
Those who would dispel these various illusions, to give us 
their drab-coloured creation in their stead, are not very 
wise. Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the glow-worm, 
carry it home with him in a box, and find it next morning 
nothing but a Httle grey worm; let the poet or the lover 
of poetry visit it at evening, when beneath the scented 
hawthorn and the crescent moon it has built itself a palace 
of emerald light. This is also one part of nature, one 
appearance which the glow-worm presents, and that not 
the least interesting; so poetry is one part of the history 
of the human mind, though it is neither science nor philos- 
ophy. It cannot be concealed, however, that the progress 
of knowledge and refinement has a tendency to circum- 
scribe the limits of the imagination, and to clip the wings 
of poetry. The province of the imagination is principally 
visionary, the unknown and undefined: the understanding 
restores things to their natural boundaries, and strips them 
of their fanciful pretensions. Hence the history of religious 
and poetical enthusiasm is much the same; and both have 
received a sensible shock from the progress of experimental 
philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives 
birth and scope to the imagination: we can only fancy 
what we do not know. As in looking into the mazes of a 
tangled wood we fill them with what shapes we please, with 
ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and drear enchantments, 
so, in our ignorance of the world about us, we make gods 
or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to 
the wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears. 

" And visions, as poetic eyes avow, 
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough." 



On Poetry in General 263 

There can never be another Jacob's dream. Since that 
time, the heavens have gone farther off, and grown astro- 
nomical. They have become averse to the imagination, nor 
will they return to us on the squares of the distances, or 
on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Rembrandt's picture 
brings the matter nearer to us. — It is not only the progress 
of mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of 
civilization that are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. 
We not only stand in less awe of the preternatural world, 
but we can calculate more surely, and look with more indif- 
ference, upon the regular routine of this. The heroes of 
the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters and giants. At 
present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good or 
evil, to the incursions of wild beasts or " bandit fierce," or 
to the unmitigated fury of the elements. The time has 
been that " our fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse 
and stir as Hfe were in it." But the police spoils all; and 
we now hardly so much as dream of a midnight murder. 
Macbeth is only tolerated in this country for the sake of 
the music ; and in the United States of America, where the 
philosophical principles of government are carried still far- 
ther in theory and practice, we find that the Beggar's Opera 
is hooted from the stage. Society, by degrees, is con- 
structed into a machine that carries us safely and insipidly 
from ooe end of life to the other, in a very comfortable 
prose style. 

" Obscurity her curtain round them drew, 
And siren Sloth a dull quietus sung." 

The remarks which have been here made, would, in some 
measure, lead to a solution of the question of the com- 
parative merits of painting and poetry. I do not mean to 
give any preference, but it should seem that the argument 
which has been sometimes set up, that painting must affect 



264 English Literature 

the imagination more strongly, because it represents the 
image more distinctly, is not well founded. We may as- 
sume without much temerity, that poetry is more poetical 
than painting. When artists or connoisseurs talk on stilts 
about the poetry of painting, they shew that they know 
little about poetry, and have little love for the art. Painting 
gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting 
embodies what a thing contains in itself: poetry suggests 
what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it. But 
this last is the proper province of the imagination. Again, 
as it relates to passion, painting gives the event, poetry the 
progress of events: but it is during the progress, in the 
interval of expectation and suspense, while our hopes and 
fears are strained to the highest pitch of breathless agony, 
that the pinch of the interest lies 

" Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
And the first motion, all the interim is 
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. 
The mortal instruments are then in council ; 
And the state of m.an, like to a little, kingdom, 
Suffers then the nature of an insurrection." 

But by the time that the picture is painted, all is over. 
Faces are the best part of a picture ; but even faces are 
not what we chiefly remember in what interests us most. — 
But it may be asked then, Is there any thing better than 
Claude Lorraine's landscapes, than Titian's portraits, than 
Raphael's cartoons, or the Greek statues? Of the two 
first I shall say nothing, as they are evidently picturesque, 
rather than imaginative. Raphael's cartoons are certainly 
the finest comments that ever were made on the Scriptures. 
Would their effect be the same if we were not acquainted 
with the text? But the New Testament existed before the 
cartoons. There is one subject of which there is no car- 
toon, Christ washing the feet of the disciples the night 



On Poetry in General 265 

before his death. But that chapter does not need a com- 
mentary! It is for want of some such resting-place for 
the imagination that the Greek statues are little else than 
specious forms. They are marble to the touch and to the 
heart. They have not an informing principle within them. 
In their faultless excellence they appear sufficient to them- 
selves. By their beauty they are raised above the frailties 
of passion or suffering. By their beauty they are deified. 
But they are not objects of religious faith to us, and their 
forms are a reproach to common humanity. They seem 
to have no sympathy with us, and not to want our admira- 
tion. 

Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or 
feeling, combined with passion and fancy. In its mode of 
conveyance, it combines the ordinary use of language, with 
musical expression. There is a question of long standing 
in what the essence of poetry consists ; or what it is that 
determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in 
prose, another in verse. Milton has told us his idea of 
poetry in a single line — 

" Thoughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers." 

As there are certain sounds that excite certain move- 
ments, and the song and dance go together, so there are, 
no doubt, certain thoughts that lead to certain tones of 
voice, or modulations of sound, and change " the words of 
Mercury into the songs of Apollo." There is a striking 
instance of this adaptation of the movement of sound and 
rhythm to the subject, in Spenser's description of the Satyrs 
accompanying Una to the cave of Sylvanus. 

" So from the ground she fearless doth arise 
And waiketh forth without suspect of crime. 



266 English Literature 

They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime, 

Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round. 

Shouting and singing all a shepherd'^rhyme ; 
And with green branches strewing all the ground, 
Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown'd. 

And all the way their merry pipes they sound, 
That all the woods with doubled echo ring; 

And with their horned feet do wear the ground, 
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring; 

So towards old Sylvanus they her bring, 
Who with the noise awaked, cometh out." 

Faery Queen, b. i. c. vi. 

On the contrary, there is nothing either musical or natural 
in the ordinary construction of language. It is a thing 
altogether arbitrary and conventional. Neither in the 
sounds themselves, which are the voluntary signs of certain 
ideas, nor in their grammatical arrangements in common 
speech, is there any principle of natural, imitation, or cor- 
respondence to the individual ideas, or to the tone of feeling 
with which they are conveyed to others. The jerks, the 
breaks, the inequalities, and harshnesses of prose are fatal 
to the flow of a poetical imagination, as a jolting road or 
a stumbling horse disturbs the reverie of an absent man. 
But poetry makes these odds all even. It is the music of 
language, answering to the music of the mind, untying as 
it were '' the secret soul of harmony." Wherever any 
object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us dwell 
upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in tenderness, 
or kindling it to a sentiment of enthusiasm ; — wherever a 
movement of imagination or passion is impressed on the 
mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, 
to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give 
the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, 
or gradually varied according to the occasion, to the sounds 
that express it — this is poetry. The musical in sound is the 
sustained and continuous ; the musical in thought is the 



On Poetry in General 267 

sustained and continuous also. There is a near connection 
between music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. 
As often as articulation passes, naturally into intonation, 
there poetry begins. Where one idea gives a tone and 
colour to others, where one feeling melts others into it, 
there can be no reason why the same principle should not 
be extended to the sounds by which the voice utters these 
emotions of the soul, and blends syllables and lines into 
each other. It is to supply the inherent defect of harmony 
in the customary mechanism of language, to make the 
sound an echo to the sense, when the sense becomes a sort 
of echo to itself — to mingle the tide of verse, ''the golden 
cadences of poetry," with the tide of feeling, flowing and 
murmuring as it flows — in short, to take the language of 
the imagination from off the ground, and enable it to 
spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses — 

'* Sailing with supreme dominion 
Through the azure deep of air " — 

without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the 
abruptnesses and petty obstacles, and discordant flats and 
sharps of prose, that poetry was invented. It is to common 
language, what springs are to a carriage, or wings to feet. 
In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony by the 
modulations of voice: in poetry the same thing is done 
systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has 
been well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, 
or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank 
verse or measured prose. The merchant, as described in 
Chaucer, went on his way " sounding always the increase 
of his winning." Every prose-writer has more or less of 
rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when deprived 
of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no prin- 
ciple of modulation left in their writings. 



268 English Literature 

An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. 
It is but fair that the ear should Hnger on the sounds that 
deHght it, or avail itself of the same brilliant coincidence 
and unexpected recurrence of syllables, that have been 
displayed in the invention and collocation of images. It is 
allowed that rhyme assists the rnemory ; and a man of wit 
and shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four 
good lines of poetry are the well-known ones which tell the 
number of days in the months of the year. 

" Thirty days hath September," etc. 

But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not 
also quicken the fancy? and there are other things worth 
having at our fingers' ends, besides the contents of the 
almanac. — Pope's versification is tiresome, from its ex- 
cessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare's blank 
verse is the perfection of dramatic dialogue. 

All is not poetry that passes for such : nor does verse 
make the whole difference between poetry and prose. The 
Iliad does not cease to be poetry in a literal translation; 
and Addison's Campaign has been very properly denom- 
inated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from 
poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, 
familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no ex- 
traordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such 
difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do 
not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of 
the imagination or the passions. 

I will mention three works which come as near to poetry 
as possible without absolutely being so, namely, the Pil- 
grim's Pro^res^^ Robinson Crusoe, and the Tales of Boc- 
caccio. Chaucer and Dryden have translated some of the 
last into English rhyme, but the essence and the power 
of poetry was there before. That which lifts the spirit 



On Poetry in General 269 

above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself with 
indescribable longings, is poetry in kind, and generally fit 
to become so in name, by being " married to immortal 
verse." If it is of the essence of poetry to strike and 
fix the imagination, whether we w411 or no, to make the 
eye of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be never 
thought of afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and 
Daniel Defoe may be permitted to pass for poets in their 
way. The mixture of fancy and reality in the Pilgrim's 
Progress was never equalled in any allegory. His pil- 
grims walk above the earth, and yet are on it. What zeal, 
what beauty, what truth of fiction ! What deep feeling in 
the description of Christian's swimming across the water 
at last, and in the picture of the Shining Ones within the 
gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on their 
heads, who are to wipe all tears from his eyes ! The 
writer's genius, though not " dipped in dews of CastaHe," 
was baptised with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The prints 
in this book are no small part of it. If the confinement of 
Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a subject for the 
most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall we 
say to Robinson Crusoe in his? Take the speech of the 
Greek hero on leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and 
compare it with the reflections of the English adventurer 
in his solitary place of confinement. The thoughts of 
home, and of all from which he is for ever cut off, swell 
and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls 
its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very 
beatings of his heart become audible in the eternal silence 
that surrounds him. Thus he says, 



" As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the 
country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out 
upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to 
think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in ; and how 



270 English Literature 

I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the 
ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the 
midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break 
out upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands, and weep 
like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my 
work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon 
the ground for an hour or two together, and this was still worse 
to me, for if I could burst out into tears, or vent myself in words, 
it would go off, and the grief having exhausted itself would abate." 



The story of his adventures would not make a poem like 
the Odyssey, it is true; but the relator had the true genius 
of a poet. It has been made a question whether Richard- 
son's romances are poetry; and the answer perhaps is, that 
they are not poetry, because they are not romance. The 
interest is worked up to an inconceivable height; but it is 
by an infinite number of little things, by incessant labour 
and calls upon the attention, by a repetition of blows that 
have no rebound in them. The sympathy excited is not 
a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced 
and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. 
The story does not " give an echo to the seat where love 
is throned." The heart does not answer of itself like a 
chord in music. The fancy does not run on before the 
writer with breathless expectation, but is dragged along 
with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those with 
which the Lilliputiaiis dragged Gulliver pinioned to the 
royal palace. — Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What 
sort of a figure would he cut, translated into an epic poem, 
by the side of Achilles? Clarissa, the divine Clarissa, is 
too interesting by half. She is interesting in her ruffles, in 
her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles — she is 
interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such things, how- 
ever intensely they may be brought home to us, are not 
conductors to the imagination. There is infinite truth and 
feeling in Richardson ; but it is extracted from a caput 



On Poetry in General 271 

mortuiim of circumstances : it does not evaporate of itself. 
His poetical genius is like Ariel confined in a pine-tree, 
and requires an artificial process to let it out. Shakspeare 
says — 

'' Our poesy is as a gum 
Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our gentle flame 
Provokes itself, and like the current flies 
Each bound it chafes.* 

I shall conclude this general account with some remarks 
on four of the principal works of poetry in the world, at 
different periods of history — Homer, the Bible, Dante, and 
let me add, Ossian. In Homer, the principle of action or life 
is predominant; in the Bible, the principle of faith and 
the idea of Providence; Dante is a personification of blind 
will; and in Ossian we see the decay of life, and the lag 
end of the world. Homer's poetry is the heroic: it is full 
of life and action : it is bright as the day, strong as a 
river. In the vigour of his intellect, he grapples with all 
the objects of nature, and enters into all the relations of 
social life,. He saw many countries, and the manners of 
many men; and he has brought them all together in his 
poem. He describes his heroes going to battle with a 
prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of animal 

* Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of 
the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, 
but artificial The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that 
the one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the 
understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince 
the reason : poetry produces its effects by instantaneous sympathy. 
Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are 
in general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in 
themselves, are not to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. 
The French poetry wants the forms of the imagination. It is 
didactic more than dramatic. And some of our own poetry, which 
has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and in the 
studied use of poetic diction. 



2^2 English Literature 

spirits : we see them before us, their number, and their 
order of battle, poured out upon the plain, " all plumed 
like estriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton as goats, 
wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and gorgeous as 
the sun at midsummer," covered with gHttering armour, 
with dust and blood ; while the Gods quaff their nectar in 
golden cups, or mingle in the fray ; and the old men assem- 
bled on the walls of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen 
passes by them. The multitude of things in Homer is 
wonderful; their splendour, their truth, their force, and 
variety. His poetry is, like his religion, the poetry of 
number and form : he describes the bodies as well as the 
souls of men. 

The poetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of 
faith : it is abstract and disembodied : it is not the poetry 
of form, but of power; not of multitude, but of immensity. 
It does not divide into many, but aggrandizes into one. Its 
ideas of nature are like its ideas of God. It is not the 
poetry of social life, but of solitude : each man seems alone 
in the world with the original forms of nature, the rocks, 
the earth, and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or 
heroic enterprise, but of faith in a supreme Providence, 
and resignation to the power that governs the universe. 
As the idea of God was removed farther from humanity, 
and a scattered polytheism, it became more profound and 
intense as it became more universal, for the Infinite is 
present to every thing: "If we fly into the uttermost parts 
of the earth, it is there also ; if we turn to the east or 
the west, we cannot escape from it." Man is thus ag- 
grandised in the image of his Maker. The history of the 
■patriarchs is of this kind; they are founders of the chosen 
race of people, the inheritors of the earth; they exist in 
the generations which are to come after them. Their 
poetry, Hke their reHgious creed, is vast, unformed, ob- 



On Poetry in General 273 

scure, and infinite ; a vision is upon it — an invisible hand 
is suspended over it. The spirit of the Christian reUgion 
consists in the glory hereafter to be revealed ; but in the 
Hebrew dispensation, Providence took an immediate share 
in the affairs of this life. Jacob's dream arose out of this 
intimate communion between heaven and earth : it was 
this that let down, in the sight of the youthful patriarch, 
a golden ladder from the sky to the earth, with angels 
ascending and descending upon it, and shed a light upon 
the lonely place, which can never pass away. The story 
of Ruth, again, is as if all the depth of natural affection 
in the human race was involved in her breast. There are 
descriptions in the book of Job more prodigal of imagery, 
more intense in passion, than anything in Homer, as that 
of the state of his prosperity, and of the vision that came 
upon him by night. The metaphors in the Old Testament 
are more boldly figurative. Things were collected more 
into masses, and gave a greater momentum to the imag- 
ination. 

Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may / 
therefore claim a place in this connection. His poem is the 
first great step from Gothic darkness and, barbarism; and 
the struggle of thought in it to burst the thraldom in which 
the human mind had been so long held, is felt in every 
page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark 
shore which separates the ancient and the modern world; 
and saw the glories of antiquity dawning through the abyss 
of time, while revelation opened its passage to the other 
world. He was lost in wonder at what had been done 
before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante seems to 
have been indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his 
mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts and 
kindles his poetry; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His 
genius is not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a 



274 English Literature 

furnace. He is power, passion, self-will personified. In 
all that relates to the descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, 
he bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or 
who have come after him ; but there is a gloomy abstraction 
in his conceptions, which lies like a dead weight upon the 
mind ; a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, from the 
intensity of the impression ; a terrible obscurity, like that 
which oppresses us in dreams ; an identity of interest, which 
moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all 
things with the passions and imaginations of the human 
soul, — that make amends for all other deficiencies. The 
immediate objects he presents to the mind are not much in 
themselves, they want grandeur, beauty, and order; but 
they become every thing by the force of the character he 
impresses upon them. His mind lends its own power to 
the objects which it contemplates, instead of borrowing it 
from them. He takes advantage even of the nakedness 
and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples 
the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He 
is the severest of all writers, the most hard and impenetra- 
ble, the most opposite to the flowery and glittering; who 
relies most on his own power, and the sense of it in others, 
and who leaves most room to the imagination of his readers. 
Dante's only endeavour is to interest; and he interests by 
exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is 
himself possessed. He does not place before us the objects 
by which that emotion has been created; but he seizes on 
the attention, by shewing us the effect they produce on his 
feelings ; and his poetry accordingly gives the same thrilling 
and overwhelming sensation, which is caught by gazing 
on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. 
The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monot- 
ony in the Inferno, are excessive : but the interest never 
flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. 



On Poetry in General 275 

Dante's great power is in combining internal feelin^^s with 
external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that 
withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with 
speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, 
not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually 
unites the absolutely local and individual with the greatest 
wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the obscure and 
shadowy regions of the lower world, a tomb suddenly 
rises up with the inscription, '' I am the tomb of Pope 
Anastasius the Sixth " : and half the personages whom 
he has crowded into the Inferno are his own acquaintance. 
All this, perhaps, tends to heighten the effect by the bold 
intermixture of realities, and by an appeal, as it were, to 
the individual knowledge and experience of the reader. 
He affords few subjects for picture. There is, indeed, one 
gigantic one, that of Count Ugolino, of which Michael 
Angelo made a bas-relief, and which Sir Joshua Reynolds 
ought not to have painted. 

Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I 
cannot persuade myself to think a mere modern in the 
groundwork, is Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that 
can never be destroyed in the minds of his readers. As 
Homer is the first vigour and lustihed, Ossian is the decay 
and old age of poetry. He lives only in the recollection 
and regret of the past. There is one impression which he 
conveys more entirely than all other poets, namely, the 
sense of privation, the loss of all things, of friends, of 
good name, of country — he is even without God in the 
world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed ; 
with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight 
sheds its faint lustre on his head ; the fox peeps out of 
the ruined tower ; the thistle waves its beard to the wander- 
ing gale ; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand 
of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to 



276 English Literature 

sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind ! 
The feeling of cheerless desolation, of the loss of the pith 
and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the substance, 
and the clinging to the shadow of all things as in a mock 
embrace, is here perfect. In this way the lamentation of 
Selma for the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were 
indeed possible to shew that this writer was nothing, it 
would only be another instance of mutability, another blank 
made, another void left in the heart, another confirmation 
of that feeling which makes him so often complain, " Roll 
on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your wing to 
Ossian!" 



XVII 

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 

My father was a Dissenting Minister at W — m in 
Shropshire; and in the year 1798 (the figures that compose 
that date are to me Hke the " dreaded name of Demo- 
gorgon") Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed 
Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congrega- 
tion there. He did not come till late on the Saturday 
afternoon before he was to preach ; and Mr. Rowe, who 
himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and 
expectation, to look for the arrival of his successor, could 
find no one at all answering the description but a round- 
faced man in a short black coat (like a shooting jacket) 
which hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who 
seemed to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-pas- 
sengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce returned to give an account 
of his disappointment, when the round-faced man in black 
entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject, by begin- 
ning to talk. He did not cease while he staid ; nor has 
he since, that I know of. He held the good town of 
Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he 
remained there, " fluttering the proud Salopians like an 
eagle in a dove-cote ; " and the Welch mountains that skirt 
the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to 
have heard no such mystic sounds since the days of 

" High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay ! " 

As we passed along between W — m and Shrewsbury, and 
I eyed their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, 

277 



278 English Literature 

or the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the 
road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a Siren's song; I 
was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep ; but I had 
no notion then that I should ever be able to express my 
admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, 
till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's 
rays gHttering in the puddles of the road. I was at that 
time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the way- 
side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting the 
deadly bands that '' bound them, 

*' With Styx nine times round them," 

my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their 
plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul has 
indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with 
longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the 
prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will 
it ever find, a heart to speak to ; but that my understanding 
also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length found 
a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this 
is not to my purpose. 

My father Hved ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in 
the habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with 
Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on) accord- 
ing to the custom of Dissenting Ministers in each other's 
neighbourhood. A line of communication is thus estab- 
lished, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is 
kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquencha- 
ble, like the fires in the Agamemnon of ^schylus, placed 
at different stations, that waited for ten long years to 
announce with their blazing pyramids the destruction of 
Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over to see my 
father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. 
Rowe's probable successor ; but in the meantime I had gone 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 279 

to hear him preach the Sunday after his arrival. A poet 
and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian pulpit to 
preach the Gospel, was a romance in these degenerate days, 
a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of Christianity, 
which was not to be resisted. 

It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before 
day-light, to walk ten miles in the mud, and went to hear this 
celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to 
live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, 
comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. — // y a 
des impressions que ni le terns ni les circonstances penvent 
effacer. Diisse-je vivre des siccles entiers, le doux terns de 
ma jeunesse ne pent renaitre pour nioi, ni s'effacer jamais 
dans ma mcmoire. When I got there, the organ was play- 
ing the looth psalm, and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge 
rose and gave out his text, " And he went up into the moun- 
tain to pray, himself, alone." As he gave out this text, 
his voice " rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes," 
and when he came to the two last words, which he pro- 
nounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was 
then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom 
of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have 
floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea 
of St. John came into my mind, " of one crying in the 
wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food 
was locusts and wild honey." The preacher then launched 
into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The 
sermon was upon peace and war; upon church and state — 
not their alliance, but their separation — on the spirit of the 
world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but 
as opposed to one another. He talked of those who had 
'' inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with 
human gore." He made a poetical and pastoral excursion, 
— and to shew the fatal effects of war, drew a striking con- 



28o English Literature 

trast between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team 
afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, 
" as though he should never be old," and the same poor 
country-lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made 
drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, 
with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, 
a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome 
finery of the profession of blood. 

" Such were the notes our once-lov'd poet sung." 

And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if 
I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philos- 
ophy had met together. Truth and Genius had embraced, 
under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This 
was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. 
The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through 
the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of 
the good cause ; and the cold dank drops of dew that hung 
half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something 
genial and refreshing in them; for there was a spirit of 
hope and youth in all nature, that turned everything into 
good. The face of nature had not then the brand of Jus 
DiviNUM on it: 

" Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe." 

On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker 
came. I was called down into the room where he was, 
and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He received me very 
graciously, and I listened for a long time without uttering 
a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. '' For 
those two hours," he afterwards was pleased to say, " he 
was conversing with W. H.'s forehead ! " His appearance 
was different from what I had anticipated from seeing him 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 281 

before. At a distance, and in the dim light of the chapel, 
there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky 
obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. 
His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright — 

" As are the children of yon azure sheen." 

His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of 
ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling 
beneath them Hke a sea with darkened lustre. *' A certain 
tender bloom his face o'erspread," a purple tinge as we see 
it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish por- 
trait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was 
gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent ; his chin good-humoured 
and round ; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index 
of the will, was small, feeble, nothing — like what he has 
done. It might seem that the genius of his face as from 
a height surveyed and projected him (with sufficient capac- 
ity and huge aspiration) into the world unknown of thought 
and imagination, with nothing to support or guide his 
veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his adven- 
turous course for the New World in a scallop, without 
oars or compass. So at least I comment on it after the 
event. Coleridge in his person was rather above the 
common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like Lord Ham- 
let, '' somewhat fat and pursy." His hair (now, alas! grey) 
was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth 
masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is 
peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heaven- 
ward ; and is traditionally inseparable (though of a different 
colour) from the pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, 
as a character, to all who preach Christ crucified, and 
Coleridge was at that time one of those ! 

It was curious to observe the contrast between him and 
my father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then 



k 



282 English Literature 

declining into the vale of years. He had been a poor 
Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and sent 
to the University of Glasgow (where he studied under 
Adam Smith) to prepare him for his future destination. 
It was his mother's proudest wish to see her son a Dis- 
senting Minister. So if we look back to past generations 
(as far as eye can reach) we see the same hopes, fears, 
wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing 
in the human heart; and so we may see them (if we look 
forward) rising up for ever, and disappearing, like vapour- 
ish bubbles, in the human breast! After being tossed 
about from congregation to congregation in the heats of 
the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the Amer- 
ican war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where 
he was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from 
the only converse that he loved, the talk about disputed 
texts of Scripture and the cause of civil and religious 
liberty. Here he passed his days, repining but resigned, 
in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of the Com- 
mentators, — huge folios, not easily got through, one of 
which would outlast a winter! Why did he pore on these 
from morn to night (with the exception of a walk in the 
fields or a turn in the garden to gather brocoli-plants or 
kidney beans of his own rearing, with no small degree of 
pride and pleasure) ? — Here were " no figures nor no fan- 
tasies," — neither poetry nor philosophy — nothing to dazzle, 
nothing to excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre 
eyes there appeared, within the pages of the ponderous, 
unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH 
in Hebrew capitals : pressed down by the weight of the style, 
worn to the last fading thinness of the understanding, 
there were glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal 
wanderings, with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and 
processions of camels at the distance of three thousand 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 283 

years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the numler 
of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law 
and the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on 
the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation ! there were 
outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of 
the riches of Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date 
of the creation, predictions of the end of all things; the 
great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the globe 
were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; 
and though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic 
veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in 
a slumber ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of 
sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's life was com- 
paratively a dream ; but it was a dream of infinity and 
eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to 
come ! 

No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the 
host and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of 
nondescript : yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian 
cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been 
more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. 
Indeed, his thoughts had wings; and as the silken sounds 
rustled round our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw 
back his spectacles over his forehead, his white hairs mixing 
with its sanguine hue ; and a smile of delight beamed across 
his rugged cordial face, to think that Truth had found a 
new ally in Fancy ! "^ Besides, Coleridge seemed to take 
considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. 
He talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over 
a variety of subjects. At dinner-time he grew more ani- 

* My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He 
used to be very much dissatisfied that T preferred his Letters to his 
Sermons. The last were forced and dry ; the first came naturally 
from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, 
indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled. 



284 English Literature 

mated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary 
Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, he said, he con- 
sidered (on my father's speaking of his Vindicice Gal- 
licce as a capital performance) as a clever scholastic man 
— a master of the topics, — or as the ready warehouseman 
of letters, who knew exactly where to lay his hand on what 
he wanted, though the goods were not his own. He thought 
him no match for Burke, either in style or matter. Burke 
was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke 
was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, 
because he had^ an eye for nature : Mackintosh, on the other 
hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an eye to common- 
places. On this I ventured to say that I had always enter- 
tained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I 
could find) the speaking of him with contempt might be 
made the test of a vulgar democratical mind. This was 
the first observation I ever made to Coleridge, and he 
said it was a very just and striking one. I remember the 
leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day 
had the finest flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that 
Mackintosh and Tom. Wedgwood (of whom, however, he 
spoke highly) had expressed a very indifferent opinion of 
his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them — 
" He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the 
distance ! " Godwin had once boasted to him of having 
carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three hours 
with dubious success ; Coleridge told him — '' If there had 
been a man of genius in the room, he would have settled 
the question in five minutes." He asked me if I had ever, 
seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a 
few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off God- 
win's objections to something she advanced with quite a 
playful, easy air. He replied, that " this was only one 
instance of the ascendancy which people of imagination 



i 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 285 

exercised over those of mere intellect." He did not rate 
Godwin very high * (this was caprice or prejudice, real 
or affected) but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's 
powers of conversation, none at all of her talent for book- 
making. We talked a little about Holcroft. He had been 
asked if he was not much struck with him, and he said, he 
thought himself in more danger of being struck by him. 
I complained that he would not let me get on at all, for 
he required a definition of every the commonest word, 
exclaiming, "What do you mean by a sensation, Sir? 
What do you mean by an ideaf " This, Coleridge said, was 
barricadoing the road to truth : it was setting up a turnpike- 
gate at every step we took. I forget a great number of 
things, many more than I remember ; but the day passed 
off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Coleridge was to 
return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, 
I found that he had just received a letter from his friend, 
T. Wedgwood, making him an offer of 150 /. a-year if he 
chose to wave his present pursuit, and devote himself 
entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge 
seemed to make up his mind to close with this proposal 
in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an addi- 
tional damp on his departure. It took the wayward en- 
thusiast quite from us to cast him into Deva's winding 
vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of living 
at ten miles distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting 
congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit 
the Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable 
Mountains. Alas ! I knew not the way thither, and felt very 
little gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's bounty. I was pres- 

* He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempt- 
ing to establish the future immortality of man, "without" (as he 
said) "knowing what Death was or what Life was" — and the tone 
in which he pronounced these two words 'seemed to convey a com- 
plete image of both. 



286 English Literature 

ently relieved from this dilemma ; for Mr. Coleridge, asking 
for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write something 
on a bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating 
step, and giving me the precious document, said that that 
was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether-Stow'ey, Somerset- 
shire; and that he should be glad to see me there in a few 
weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet 
me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this 
simile is to be found in Cassandra) when he sees a thunder- 
bolt fall close at his feet. I stammered out my acknowl- 
edgments and acceptance of this offer (I thought Mr. 
Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I could; and 
this mighty business being settled, the poet-preacher took 
leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It 
was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he talked 
the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is described as 
going 

" Sounding on his way." 

So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in 
passing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float 
in air, to slide on ice. He told me in confidence (going 
along) that he should have preached two sermons before 
he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury, one on Infant 
Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, shewing that 
he could not administer either, which would have effectually 
disqualified him for the object in view. I observed that he 
continually crossed me on the way by shifting from one 
side of the foot-path to the other. This struck me as an 
odd movement ; but I did not at that time connect it with 
any instability of purpose or involuntary change of prin- 
ciple, as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep 
on in a strait line. He spoke slightingly of Hume 
(whose Essay on Miracles he said was stolen from an 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 287 

objection started in one of South's sermons — Credat Jiidaus 
Appella!) I was not very much pleased at this account of 
Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite rehsh, that 
completest of all metaphysical choke-pears, his Treatise on 
Human Nature, to which the Essays, in point of 
scholastic subtlety and close reasoning, are mere elegant 
trifling, light summer-reading. Coleridge even denied the 
excellence of Hume's general style, which I think betraye:l 
a want of taste or candour. He however made me amends 
by the manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt 
particularly on his Essay on Vision as a masterpiece of 
analytical reasoning. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceed- 
ingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with 
his foot, in allusion to this author's Theory of Matter and 
Spirit, and saying, " Thus I confute him, Sir." Coleridge 
drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about the 
connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He 
said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an 
acute mind, than which no two things could be more dis- 
tinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the 
characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop 
Butler as a true philosopher, a profound and conscientious 
thinker, a genuine reader of nature and of his own mind. 
He did not speak of his Analogy, but of his Sermons at the 
Rolls' Chapel, of which I had never heard. Coleridge 
somehow always contrived to prefer the unknown to the 
known. In this instance he was right. The Analogy is a 
tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special-plead- 
ing; the Sermons (with the Preface to them) are in a fine 
vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our 
observation of human nature, without pedantry and without 
bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and 
was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made 
a discovery on the same subject (the Natural Disinter- 



288 English Literature 

estedness of the Human Mind) — and I tried to explain my 
view of it to Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, 
but I did not succeed in making myself understood. I sat 
down to the task shortly afterwards for the twentieth time, 
got new pens and paper, determined to make clear work of 
it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton-style of a 
mathematical demonstration, stopped half-way down the 
second page ; and, after trying in vain to pump up any 
words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or observa- 
tions, from that gulph of abstraction in which I had plunged 
myself for four or five years preceding, gave up the attempt 
as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency 
on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough 
now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth 
discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express 
it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. 
Would that I could go back to what I then was ! Why 
can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? 
If I had the quaint Muse of Sir PhiHp Sidney to assist 
me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road betzveen W — ni and 
Shrezvshury, and immortalise every step of it by some fond 
enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very mile- 
stones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its 
pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed ! I remember but 
one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned 
Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, 
but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time- 
serving casuist, and said that " the fact of his work on 
Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in 
our Universities was a disgrace to the national character." 
We parted at the six-mile stone ; and I returned homeward 
pensive but much pleased. I had met with unexpected 
notice from a person, whom I believed to have been preju- 
diced against me. " Kind and affable to me had been his 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 289 

condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable 
regard." He was the first poet I had known, and he cer- 
tainly answered to that inspired name. I had heard a great 
deal of his powers of conversation, and was not disap- 
pointed. In fact, I never met with any thing at all like 
them, either before or since. I could easily credit the 
accounts which were circulated of his holding forth to a 
large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two 
before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole 
material universe look Hke a transparency of fine words; 
and another story (which I believe he has somewhere told 
himself) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of 
his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a 
sofa, where the company found him to their no small sur- 
prise, which was increased to wonder when he started up 
of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked about him, and 
launched into a three-hours' description of the third 
heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different from 
Mr. Southey's Vision of Judgment, and also from that other 
Vision of Judgment, which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of 
the Bridge-street Junto, has taken into his especial keeping ! 
On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the 
voice of Fancy : I had a light before me, it was the face 
of Poetry. The one still lingers there, the other has not 
quitted my side ! Coleridge in truth met me half-way on 
the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won 
over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable 
sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During those 
months the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; 
the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The golden 
sun-sets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way 
to new hopes and prospects. / was to visit Coleridge in the 
spring. This circumstance was never absent from my 
thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to 



\ 



290 English Literature 

him at the time proposed, and received an answer post- 
poning my intended visit for a week or two, but very cor- 
dially urging me to complete my promise then. This delay 
did not damp, but rather increase my ardour. In the 
mean time, I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating 
myself in the mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say 
I was enchanted with it. I had been reading Coleridge's 
description of England, in his fine Ode on the Departing 
Year, and I applied it, con amore, to the objects before me. 
That valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a new 
existence : in the river that winds through it, my spirit was 
baptised in the waters of Helicon ! 

I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey 
with unworn heart and untired feet. My way lay through 
Worcester and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought 
of Tom Jones and the adventure of the mufif. I remember 
getting completely wet through one day, and stopping at 
an inn (I think it was at Tewkesbury) where I sat up all 
night to read Paul and Virginia. Sweet were the showers 
in early youth that drenched my body, and sweet the drops 
of pity that fell upon the books I read ! I recollect a remark 
of Coleridge's upon this very book, that nothing could 
shew the gross indeHcacy of French manners and the entire 
corruption of their imagination more strongly than the be- 
haviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns 
away from a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers 
to save her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to 
assist him in swimming. Was this a time to think of such 
a circumstance? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were 
sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I thought he had 
borrowed the idea of his Poems on the Naming of Places 
from the local inscriptions of the same kind in Paul and 
Virginia. He did not own the obligation, and stated some 
distinction without a difference, in defence of his claim to 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 291 

originality. Any the slightest variation would be suffi- 
cient for this purpose in his mind ; for whatever he added or 
omitted would inevitably be worth all that any one else had 
done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. — I was still 
two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had 
taken care to set out early enough. I stopped these two 
days at Bridgewater, and when I was tired of sauntering 
on the banks of its muddy river, returned to the inn, and 
read Camilla. So have I loitered my Hfe away, reading 
books, looking at pictures,, going to plays, hearing, thinking, 
writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one 
thing to make me happy; but wanting that, have wanted 
every thing! 

I arrived, and was well received. The country about 
Nether Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the 
sea-shore. I saw it but the other day, after an interval of 
twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. How was the 
map of my life spread out before me, as the map of the 
country lay at my feet! In the afternoon, Coleridge took 
me over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family-mansion of 
the St. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived. It was then in 
the possession of a friend of the poet's, who gave him the 
free use of it. Somehow that period (the time just after 
the French Revolution) was not a time when nothing zvas 
given for nothing. The mind opened, and a softness might 
be perceived coming over the heart of individuals, beneath 
" the scales that fence " our self-interest. Wordsworth 
himself was from home, but his sister kept house, and set 
before us a frugal repast ; and we had free access to her 
brother's poems, the Lyrical Ballads, which were still in 
manuscript, or in the form of Syhillinc Leaves. I dipped 
into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the 
faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room with 
blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced family- 



292 English Literature 

portraits of the age of George I. and II. and from the 
wooded decHvity of the adjoining park that overlooked my 
window, at the dawn of day, could 

" hear the loud stag speak." 

In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt 
it so) our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state 
between sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glori- 
ous glimpses of strange shapes, and there is always some- 
thing to come better than what we see. As in our dreams 
the fulness of the blood gives warmth and reality to the 
coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed, and 
fed, and pampered with our good spirits ; we breathe thick 
with thoughtless happiness, the weight of future years 
presses on the strong pulses of the heart, and we repose 
with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As we advance, 
we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. We are 
no longer wrapped in lamh's-wool, lulled in Elysium. As 
we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the 
sense palls ; and nothing is left but the phantoms, the life- 
less shadows of what has been! 

That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled 
out into the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an 
old ash-tree that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read 
aloud with a sonorous and musical voice, the ballad of 
Betty Foy. I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I 
saw touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for 
granted. But in the Thorn, the Mad Mother, and the Com- 
plaint of a Poor Indian Woman, I felt that deeper power 
and pathos which have been since acknowledged, 

" In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite," 

as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a 
new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 293 

to me something of the effect that arises from the turning 
up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of 
Spring, 

" While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed." 

Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, 
and his voice sounded high 

" Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 

as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or 
waterfall, gleaming in the summer moonlight ! He la- 
mented that Wordsworth was not prone enough to belief 
in the traditional superstitions of the place, and that there 
was a something corporeal, a matter-of-fact-ness, a clinging 
to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in con- 
sequence. His genius was not a spirit that descended to 
him through the air; it sprung out of the ground like a 
flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, on which the 
gold-finch sang. He said, however (if I remember right), 
that this objection must be confined to his descriptive pieces, 
that his philosophic poetry had a grand and comprehensive 
spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the universe 
like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather than 
by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from 
Bristol at Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He 
answered in some degree to his friend's description of him, 
but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly 
dressed (according to the costume of that unconstrained 
period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. 
There was something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not 
unhke his own Peter Bell. There was a severe, worn 
pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye 



294 English Literature 

(as if he saw something in objects more than the outward 
appearance) an intense high narrow forehead, a Roman 
nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, and 
a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a 
good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression 
of the rest of his face. Chantrey's bust wants the marking 
traits ; but he was teazed into making it regular and heavy : 
Haydon's head of him, introduced into the Entrance of 
Christ into Jerusalem, is the most like his drooping weight 
of thought and expression. He sat down and talked very 
naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing ac- 
cents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong 
tincture of the northern 4?urr, like the crust on wine. He 
instantly began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire 
cheese on the table, and said triumphantly that " his mar- 
riage with experience had not been so unproductive as Mr. 
Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good things 
of this life." He had been to see the Castle Spectre by 
Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. 
He said " it fitted the taste of the audience like a glove." 
This ad captandum merit was however by no means a 
recommendation of it, according to the severe principles of 
the new school, which reject rather than court popular 
effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the low, latticed win- 
dow, said, " How beautifully the sun sets on that yellow 
bank ! " I thought within jnyself, " With what eyes these 
poets see nature ! " and ever after, when I saw the sun-set 
stream upon the objects facing it, conceived I had made 
a discovery, or thanked Mr. Wordsworth for having made 
one for me ! We went over to All-Foxden again the day 
following, and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter 
Bell in the open air; and the^ comment upon it by his face 
and voice was very different from that of some later critics ! 
Whatever might be thought of the poem, " his face was as 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 295 

a book where men might read strange matters," and he 
announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There 
is a chaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge and Words- 
worth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms 
the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves by 
making habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment. 
Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied; 
Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. The 
one might be termed more draniaiic, the other more lyrical. 
Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose in 
walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the strag- 
gling branches of a copse wood ; whereas Wordsworth al- 
ways wrote (if he could) walking up and down a strait 
gravel-walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his 
verse met with no collateral interruption. Returning that 
same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with 
Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different 
notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither 
of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and 
intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey 
and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the after- 
noons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of tark by 
the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm- 
trees, and listening to the bees humming round us, while 
we quaffed our Hip. It was agreed, among other things, 
that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol-Channel, as 
far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, 
John Chester, and L This Chester was a native of Nether 
Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge's 
discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time 
to the sound of a brass pan. He " followed in the chace, 
like a dog who hunts, not like one that made up the cry." 
He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, 
was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk 



296 English Literature 

like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept 
on a sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running 
footman by a state coach, that he might not lose a syllable 
or sound, that fell from Coleridge's lips. He told me his 
private opinion, that Coleridge was a wonderful man. He 
scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an opinion the 
whole way: yet of the three, had I to chuse during that 
journey, I would be John Chester. He afterwards followed 
Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean philosophers 
were puzzled how to bring him under any of their cate- 
gories. When he sat down at table with his idol, John's 
felicity was complete; Sir Walter Scott's or Mr. Black- 
wood's, when they sat down at the same table with the 
King, was not more so. We passed Dunster on our right, 
a small town between the brow of a hill and the sea. I 
remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay below us : contrasted 
with the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, 
as embrowned and ideal as any landscape I have seen since, 
of Caspar Poussin's or Domenichino's. We had a long 
day's march — (our feet kept time to the echoes of 
Coleridge's tongue) — through Minehead and by the Blue 
Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near 
midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a 
lodgment. We however knocked the people of the house 
up at last, and we were repaid for our apprehensions and 
fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. 
The view in coming along had been splendid. We walked 
for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the 
channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times de- 
scended into little sheltered valleys close by the sea-side, 
with a smuggler's face scowling by us, and then had to 
ascend conical hills with a path winding up through a cop- 
pice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven crown, from 
one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's notice the bare 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 297 

masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon and 
within the red-orbed disk of the setting sun, Hke his own 
spectre-ship in the Ancient Mariner. At Linton the char- 
acter of the sea-coast becomes more marked and rugged. 
There is a place called the Valley of Rocks (I suspect this 
was only the poetical name for it) bedded among preci- 
pices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into 
which the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever 
wheels its screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge 
stones thrown transverse, as if an earthquake had tossed 
them there, and behind these is a fretwork o'f perpendicular 
rocks, something like the Giant's Cavisezvay. A thunder- 
storm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was 
running out bareheaded to "njoy the commotion of the 
elements in the Valley of Rocks, but as if in spite, the clouds 
only muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few re- 
freshing drops. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth 
Were to have made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which 
was to have been in the manner of, but far superior to, the 
Death of Abel, but they had relinquished the design. In 
the morning of the second day, we breakfasted luxuriously 
in an old-fashioned parlour, on tea, toast, eggs, and honey, 
in the very sight of the bee-hives from which it had been 
taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that 
had produced it. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of 
Virgil's Georgics, but not well. I do not think he had 
much feeling for the classical or elegant. It was in this 
room that we found a little worn-out copy of the Seasons, 
lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, 
" That is true fame ! " He said Thomson was a great 
poet, rather than a good one ; his style was as meretricious 
as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the 
best modern poet. He said the Lyrical Ballads were an 
experiment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, to 



298 English Literature 

see how far the pubHc taste would endure poetry written 
in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been 
attempted ; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, 
and making use only of such words as had probably been 
common in the most ordinary language since the days of 
Henry 11. Some comparison was introduced between 
Shakspeare and Milton. He said '' he hardly knew which 
to prefer. Shakspeare appeared to him a mere stripling 
in the art ; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely more 
activity than Milton, but he never appeared to have come 
to man's estate; or if he had, he would not have been a 
man, but a monster." He spoke with contempt of Gray, 
and with intolerance of Pope. He did not like the versifica- 
tion of the latter. He observed that '' the ears of these 
couplet-writers might be charged with having short mem- 
ories, that could not retain the harmony of whole passages." 
He thought little of Junius as a writer ; he had a dislike of 
Dr. Johnson; and a much higher opinion of Burke as an 
orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He however 
thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery 
to some of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy 
Taylor. He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could 
I get him to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams.'^ In 
short, he was profound and discriminating with respect to 
those authors whom he liked, and where he gave his judg- 
ment fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his 
antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the " ribbed sea- 

* He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this 
time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account 
at present of the cartoons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others; of 
one in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his 
scy.the, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his 
approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their 
deliverer. He would of course understand so broad and fine a 
moral as this at any time. 



My First Acquaintance with Poets 299 

sands," in snch talk as this, a whole morning, and I recollect 
met with a curious sea-weed, of which John Chester tol 1 
us the country name ! A fisherman gave Coleridge an 
account of a boy that had been drowned the day before, 
and that they had tried to save him at the risk of their 
own Hves. He said '' he did not know how it was that they 
ventured, but, Sir, we have a nature towards one another." 
This expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine 
illustration of that theory of disinterestedness which I (in 
common with Butler) had adopted. I broached to him an 
argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere 
association of ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put 
one in mind of a man's foot, not because it was part of 
a former impression of a man's foot (for it was quite 
new) but because it was like the shape of a man's foot. 
He assented to the justness of this distinction (which I have 
explained at length elsewhere, for the benefit of the curious) 
and John Chester listened ; not from any interest in the 
subject, but because he was astonished that I should be 
able to suggest any thing to Coleridge that he did not 
already know. We returned on the third morning, and 
Coleridge remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the 
valleys where, a few evenings before, we had seen the 
lights gleaming through the dark. 

In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey we set out, 
I on my return home, and he for Germany. It was a 
Sunday morning, and he was to preach that day for Dr. 
Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared any 
thing for the occasion? He said he had not even thought 
of the text, but should as soon as we parted. I did not 
go to hear him, — this was a fault, — but we met in the even- 
ing at Bridgewater. The next day we had a long day's 
walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side 
on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when 



300 English Literature 

Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines from his 
tragedy of Remorse; which I must say became his mouth 
and that occasion better than they, some years after, did 
Mr. Elliston's and the Drury-lane boards, — 

" Oh memorj^ ! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
And give those scenes thine everlasting life." 

I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which 
period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in 
Germany; and his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike 
his setting out. It was not till some time after that I knew 
his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always appears 
to me (as I first saw him) with a common-place book under 
his arm, and the first with a bon-mot in his mouth. It was 
at Godwin's that I met him with Holcroft and Coleridge, 
where they were disputing fiercely which was the best — 
Man as he was^ or man as he is to be. " Give me," says 
Lamb, " man as he is not to be." This saying was the 
beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still 
continues. — Enough of this for the present. 

" But there is matter for another rh3^me, 
And I to this may add a second tale." 



XVIII 

ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS 

The soul of conversation is sympathy.— Authors should 
converse chiefly with authors, and their talk should be of 
books. " When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug 
of war." There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to 
be pedantic. No man can get above his pursuit in life : it 
is getting above himself, which is impossible. There is a 
Free-masonry in all things. You can only speak to be 
understood, but this you cannot be, except by those who 
are in the secret. Hence an argument has been drawn 
to supersede the necessity of conversation altogether ; for 
it has been said, that there is no use in talking to people 
of sense, who know all that you can tell them, nor to 
fools, who will not be instructed. There is, however, the 
smallest encouragement to proceed, when you are conscious 
that the more you really enter into a subject, the farther you 
will be from the comprehension of your hearers — and that 
the more proofs you give of any position, the more odd and 

out-of-the-way they will think your notions. C is the 

only person who can talk to all sorts of people, on all sorts 
of subjects, without caring a farthing for their understand- 
ing one word he says — and he talks only for admiration 
and to be listened to, and accordingly the least interruption 
puts him out. I firmly believe he would make just the same 
impression on half his audiences, if he purposely repeated 
absolute nonsense with the same voice and manner and 
inexhaustible flow of undulating speech ! In general, 

301 



302 English Literature 

wit shines only by reflection. You must take your cue 
from your company — must rise as they rise, and sink a^ 
they fall. You must see that your good things, your 
knowing allusions, are not flung away, hke the pearls 
in the adage. What a check it is to be asked a foolish 
question ; to find that the first principles are not under- 
stood ! You are thrown on your back immediately, the 
conversation is stopped like a country-dance by those who 
do not know the figure. But when a set of adepts, of 
illuminati, get about a question, it is worth while to hear 
them talk. They may snarl and quarrel over it, like dogs ; 
but they pick it bare to the bone, they masticate it 
thoroughly. 

This was the case formerly at L 's — where we used 

to have many lively skirmishes at their Thursday evening 
parties. I doubt whether the Small-coal man's musical 
parties could exceed them. Oh ! for the pen of John Buncle 
to consecrate a petit souvenir to their memory ! — There was 

L himself, the most delightful, the most provoking, 

the most witty and sensible of men. He always made the 
best pun, and the best remark in the course of the evening. 
His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his 
best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, 
eloquent things in half a dozen half sentences as he does. 
His jests scald like tears : and he probes a question with a 
play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hair-brained 
vein of home-felt truth ! What choice venom ! How often 
did we cut into the haunch of letters, while we discussed 
the haunch of mutton on the table ! How we skimmed the 
cream of criticism ! How we got into the heart of con- 
troversy ! How we picked out the marrow of authors ! 
*' And, in our flowing cups, many a good name and true 
was freshly remembered." Recollect (most sage and 
critical reader) that in all this I was but a guest! Need 



\ 



On the Conversation of Authors 303 

I go over the names? They were but the old everlasting 
set — Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele 
and Addison, Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, 
Richardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's landscapes, the Car- 
toons at Hampton-court, and all those things, that, having 
once been, must ever be. The Scotch Novels had not 
then been heard of: so we said nothing about them. In 
general, we were hard upon the moderns. The author of 
the Rambler was oiily tolerated in Boswell's Life of him; 
and it was as much as anyone could do to edge in a word 

for Junius. L could not bear Gil Bias. This was a 

fault. I remember the greatest triumph I ever had was in 
persuading him, after some years' difficulty, that Fielding 
was better than Smollett. On one occasion, he was for 
making out a Hst of persons famous in history that one 
would wish to see again — at the head of whom were Pontius 
Pilate, Sir Thomas Browne, and Dr. Faustus — but we 
black-balled most of his list! But with what a gusto would 
he describe his favourite authors, Donne, or Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, and call their most crabbed passages delicious! He 
tried them on his palate as epicures taste oHves, and his 
observations had a smack in them, like a roughness on the 
tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in 
what he admired most — as in saying that the display of 
the sumptuous banquet in Paradise Regained was not in 
true keeping, as the simplest fare was all that was necessary 
to tempt the extremity of hunger — and stating that Adam 
and Eve in Paradise Lost were too much like married 

people. He has furnished many a text for C to preach 

upon. There was no fuss or cant' about him: nor were his 
sweets or his sours ever diluted with one particle of affecta- 
tion. I cannot say that the party at L 's were all of 

one description. There were honorary members,- lay- 
brothers. Wit and good fellowship was the motto inscribed 



304 English Literature 

over the door. When a stranger came in, it was not asked, 
''Has he written anything?" — we were above that 
pedantry; but we waited to see what he could do. If he 
could take a hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down. 
If a person liked any thing, if he took snuff heartily, it was 
sufficient. He would understand, by analogy, the pungency 
of other things, besides Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. 
A character was good any where, in a room or on paper. 
But we abhorred insipidity, affectation, and fine gentlemen. 
There was one of our party who never failed to mark 
" two for his Nob " at cribbage, and he was thought no 

mean person. This was Ned P , and a better fellow in 

his way breathes not. There was , who asserted some 

incredible matter of fact as a likely paradox, and settled 
all controversies by an ipse dixit, a fiat of his will, ham- 
mering out many a hard theory on the anvil of his brain — 
the Baron Munchausen of politics and practical philosophy: 

— there was Captain , who had you at an advantage 

by never understanding you : — there was Jem White, the 
author of Falstaff's Letters, who the other day left this 
dull world to go in search of more kindred spirits, " turn- 
ing like the latter end of a lover's lute : " — there was A , 

who sometimes dropped in, the Will Honeycomb of our 

set — and Mrs. R , who being of a quiet turn, loved to 

hear a noisy debate. An utterly uninformed person might 
have supposed this a scene of vulgar confusion and uproar. 
While the most critical question was pending, while the 
most difficult problem in philosophy was solving, P — — 
cried out, " That's game," and M. B. muttered a quotation 
over the last remains of a veal-pie at a side-table. Once, 
and once only, the literary interest overcame the general. 
For C was riding the high German horse, and demon- 
strating the Categories of the Transcendental philosophy to 
the author of the Road to Ruin ; who insisted on his knowl- 



On the Conversation of Authors 305 

edge of German, and German metaphysics, having read the 
Critique of Pure Reason in the original. " My dear Mr. 

Holcroft," said C , in a tone of infinitely provoking 

conciliation, " you really put me in mind of a sweet pretty 
German girl, about fifteen, that I met with in the Hartz 
forest in Germany — and who one day, as I was reading the 
Limits of the Knowable and the Unknowable, the pro- 
foundest of all his works, with great attention, came behind 
my chair, and leaning over, said, What, you read Kant? 
Why, / that am a German born, don't understand him ! " 
This was too much to bear, and Holcroft, starting up, 

called out in no measured tone, *' Mr. C , you are the 

most eloquent man I ever met with, and the most trouble- 
some with your eloquence ! " P held the cribbage-peg 

that was to mark him game, suspended in his hand ; and 
the whist table was silent for a moment. I saw Holcroft 
down stairs, and, on coming to the landing-place in Mitre- 
court, he stopped me to observe, that " he thought ]\Ir. 
C a very clever man, with a great command of lan- 
guage, but that he feared he did not always affix very 
precise ideas to the words he used." After he was gone, 
we had our laugh out, and went on with the argument on 
the nature of Reason, the Imagination, and the Will. I 
wish I could find a publisher for it : it would make a supple- 
ment to the Biographia Literaria in a volume and a half 
octavo. 

Those days are over ! An event, the name of which I 
wish never to mention, broke up our party, like a bomb- 
shell thrown into the room : and now we seldom meet 

" Like angels' visits, short and far between." 

There is no longer the same set of persons, nor of asso- 
ciations. L does not five where he did. By shifting 

his abode, his notions seem less fixed. He does not wear 



3o6 English Literature 

his old snuff-coloured coat and breeches. It looks like an 
alteration in, his style. An author and a wit should have 
a separate costume, a particular cloth : he should present 
something positive and singular to the mind, like Mr. 
Douce of the Museum. Our faith in the religion of letters 
will not bear to be taken to pieces, and put together again 

by caprice or accident. L. H goes there sometimes. 

He has a fine vinous spirit about him, and tropical blood 
in his veins : but he is better at his own table. He has a 
great flow of pleasantry and delightful animal spirits: but 

his hits do not tell like L 's; you cannot repeat them 

the next day. He requires not only to be appreciated, but 
to have a select circle of admirers and devotees, to feel 
himself quite at home. He sits at the head of a party with 
great gaiety and grace; has an elegant manner and turn 
of features; is never at a loss — aliquando siifflaminandiis 
erat — has continual sportive sallies of wit or fancy; tells 
a story capitally; mimics an actor, or an acquaintance to 
admiration; laughs with great glee and good-humour at 
his own or other people's jokes; understands the point of 
an equivoque, or an observation immediately; has a taste 
and knowledge of books, of music, of medals; manages 
an argument adroitly ; is genteel and gallant, and has a set 
of bye-phrases and quaint allusions always at hand to pro- 
duce a laugh : — if he has a fault, it is that he does not 
listen so well as he speaks, is impatient of interruption, 
and is fond of being looked up to, without considering by 
whom. I believe, however, he has pretty well seen the 
folly of this. Neither is his ready display of personal ac- 
complishment and variety of resources an advantage to his 
writings. They sometimes present a desultory and slip- 
shod appearance, owing to this very circumstance. The 
same things that tell, perhaps, best, to a private circle round 
the fireside, are not always intelligible to the public, nor 



On the Conversation of Authors 307 

does he take pains to make them so. He is too confident 
and secure of his audience. That which may be entertain- 
ing enough with the assistance of a certain Uveliness of 
manner, may read very flat on paper, because it is ab- 
stracted from all the circumstances that had set it off to 
advantage. A writer should recollect that he has only to 
trust to the immediate impression of words, like a musician 
who sings without the accompaniment of an instrument. 
There is nothing to help out, or slubber over, the defects 
of the voice in the one case, nor of the style in the other. 
The reader may, if he pleases, get a very good idea of 

L. H 's conversation from a very agreeable paper he 

has lately published, called the Indicator, than which noth- 
ing can be more happily conceived or executed. 

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as 
of being heard. Authors in general are not good listeners. 
Some of the best talkers are, on this account, the worst 
company; and some who are very indifferent, but very 
great talkers, are as bad. It is sometimes wonderful to see 
how a person, who has been entertaining or tiring a com- 
pany by the hour together, drops his countenance as if he 
had been shot, or had been seized with a sudden lock-jaw, 
the moment anyone interposes a single observation. The 
best converser I know is, however, the best listener. I 
mean Mr. Northcote, the painter. Painters by their pro- 
fession are not bound to shine in conversation, and they 
shine the more. He lends his ear to an observation, as if 
you had brought him a piece of news, and enters into it 
with as much avidity and earnestness, as if it interested 
himself personally. If he repeats an old remark or story, 
it is with the same freshness and point as for the first time. 
It always arises out of the occasion, and has the stamp 
of originality. There is no parroting of himself. His look 
is a continual, ever-varying history-piece of what passes 



k 



3o8 English Literature 

in his mind. His face is as a book. There need no marks of 
interjection or interrogation to what he says. His manner 
is quite picturesque. There is an excess of character and 
naivete that never tires. His thoughts bubble up and 
sparkle, like beads on old wine. The fund of anecdote, the 
collection of curious particulars, is enough to set up any 
common retailer of jests, that dines out every day; but these 
are not strung together like a row of galley-slaves, but are 
always introduced to illustrate some argument or bring out 
some fine distinction of character. The mixture of spleen 
adds to the sharpness of the point, like poisoned- arrows. 
Mr. Northcote enlarges with enthusiasm on the old painters, 
and tells good things of the new. The only thing he ever 
vexed me in was his liking the Catalogue Raisonnee. I had 
almost as soon hear him talk of Titian's pictures (which he 
does with tears in his eyes, and looking just like them) as 
see the originals, and I had rather hear him talk of Sir 
Joshua's than see them. He is the last of that school who 
knew Goldsmith and Johnson. How finely he describes 
Pope ! His elegance of mind, his figure, his character were 
not unlike his own. He does not resemble a modern Eng- 
lishman, but puts one in mind of a Roman Cardinal or 
Spanish Inquisitor. I never ate or drank with Mr. North- 
cote; but I have lived on his conversation with undimin- 
ished relish ever since I can remember, — and when I leave 
it, I come out into the street with feelings lighter and 
more etherial than I have at any other time. — One of his 
tete-d-tetes would at any time make an Essay ; but he cannot 
write himself, because he loses himself in the connecting 
passages, is fearful of the efifect, and wants the habit of 
bringing his ideas into one focus or point of view. A lens 
is necessary to collect the diverging rays, the refracted and 
broken angular lights of conversation on paper. Contra- 
diction is half the battle in talking — the being startled by 



On the Conversation of Authors 309 

what others say, and having to answer on the spot. You 
have to defend yourself, paragraph by paragraph, paren- 
thesis within parenthesis. Perhaps it might be supposed 
that a person who excels in conversation and cannot write, 
would succeed better in dialogue. But the stimulus, the 
immediate irritation would be wanting ; and the work would 
read flatter than ever, from not having the very thing it 
pretended to have. 

Lively sallies and connected discourse are very different 
things. There are many persons of that impatient and 
restless- turn of mind, that they cannot wait a moment for 
a conclusion, or follow up the thread of any argument. In 
the hurry of conversation their ideas are somehow huddled 
into sense ; but in the intervals of thought, leave a great 
gap between. Montesquieu said, he often lost an idea 
before he could find words for it: yet he dictated, by way 
of saving time, to an amanuensis. This last is, in my 
opinion, a vile method, and a solecism in authorship. Home 
Tooke, among other paradoxes, used to maintain, that no 
one could write a good style who was not in the habit of 
talking and hearing the sound of his own voice. He might 
as well have said that no one could reHsh a good style 
without reading it aloud, as we find common people do to 
assist their apprehension. But there is a method of trying 
periods on the ear, or weighing them with the scales of 
the breath, without any articulate sound. Authors, as they 
write, may be said to " hear a sound so fine, there's nothing 
lives 'twixt it and silence." Even musicians generally com- 
pose in their heads. I agree that no style is good that is 
not fit to be spoken or read aloud with effect. This holds 
true not only of emphasis and cadence, but also with regard 
to natural idiom and colloquial freedom. Sterne's was in 
this respect the best style that ever was written. You fancy 
that you hear the people talking. For a contrary reason, 



3IO English Literature 

no college-man writes a good style, or understands it when 
written. Fine writing is with him all verbiage and monot- 
ony — a translation into classical centos or hexameter lines. 
That which I have just mentioned is among many in- 
stances I could give of ingenious absurdities advanced by 
Mr. Tooke in the heat and pride of controversy. A person 
who knew him well, and greatly admired his talents, said of 
him that he never (to his recollection) heard him defend 
an opinion which he thought right, or in which he believed 
him to be himself sincere. He indeed provoked his antag- 
onists into the toils by the very extravagance of his asser- 
tions, and the teasing sophistry by which he rendered them 
plausible. His temper was prompter to his skill. He had 
the manners of a man of the world, with great scholastic 
resources. He flung everyone else off his guard, and was 
himself immovable. I never knew anyone who did not 
admit his superiority in this kind of warfare. He put a 

full stop to one of C 's long-winded prefatory apologies 

for his youth and inexperience, by saying abruptly, '' Speak 
up, young man ! " and, at another time, silenced a learned 
professor, by desiring an explanation of a word which the 
other frequently used, and which, he said, he had been many 
years trying to get at the meaning of, — the copulative Is ! 
He was the best intellectual fencer of his day. He made 
strange havoc of Fuseli's fantastic hieroglyphics, violent 
humours, and oddity of dialect. — Curran, who was some- 
times of the same party, was lively and animated in con- 
vivial conversation, but dull in argument ; nay, averse to 
anything like reasoning or serious observation, and had the 
worst taste I ever knew. His favourite critical topics were 
to abuse Milton's Paradise Lost, and Romeo and Juliet. 
Indeed, he confessed a want of sufficient acquaintance with 
books when he found himself in literary society in London. 
He and Sheridan once dined at John Kemble's with Mrs. 



On the Conversation of Authors 311 

Inchbald and Mary Woolstonecroft, when the discourse 
almost wholly turned on Love, " from noon to dewy eve, a 
summer's day!" What a subject! What speakers, and 
what hearers ! What would I not give to have been there, 
had I not learned it all from the bright eyes of Amaryllis, 
and may one day make a Table-talk of it ! — Peter Pindar 
was rich in anecdote and grotesque humour, and profound 
in technical knowledge both of music, poetry, and painting, 
but he was gross and overbearing. Wordsworth sometimes 
talks like a man inspired on subjects of poetry (his own 
out of the question) — Coleridge well on every subject, and 

G — dwin on none. To finish this subject— Mrs. M 's 

conversation is as fine-cut as her features, and I like to sit 
in the room with that sort of coronet face. What she said 
leaves a flavour, like fine green tea. H — t's is like cham- 
pagne, and N 's like anchovy sandwiches. H — yd — n's 

is like a game at trap-ball : L 's like snap-dragon : and 

my own (if I do not mistake the matter) is not very much 

unlike a game at nine-pins ! One source of the 

conversation of authors, is the character of other authors, 
and on that they are rich indeed. What things they say ! 
What stories they tell of one another, more particularly of 
their friends! If I durst only give some of these con- 
fidential communications ! . . . The reader may perhaps 
think the foregoing a specimen of them: — but indeed he is 
mistaken. 

I do not know of any greater impertinence, than for an 
obscure individual to set about pumping a character of 
celebrity. '' Bring him to me," said a Doctor Tronchin, 
speaking of Rousseau, " that I may see whether he has 
anything in him." Before you can take measure of the 
capacity of others, you ought to be sure that they have not 
taken measure of yours. They may think you a spy on 
them, and may not like their company. If you really want 



'312 English Literature 

to know whether another person can talk well, begin by 
saying a good thing yourself, and you will have a right 
to look for a rejoinder. '' The best tennis-players," says 
Sir Fopling Flutter, '' make the best matches." 

For wit is like a rest 



Held up at tennis, which men do the best 
With' the best players. 

We hear it often said of a great author, or a great actress, 
that they are very stupid people in private. But he was 
a fool that said so. Tell me your company^ and I'll tell you 
your manners. In conversation, as in other things, the 
action and reaction should bear a certain proportion to each 
other. — Authors may, in some sense, be looked upon as 
foreigners, who are not naturalised even in their native 

soil. L once came down into the country to see us. 

He was '' like the most capricious poet Ovid among the 
Goths." The country people thought him an oddity, and 
did not understand his jokes. It would be strange if they 
had; for he did not make any, while he staid. But when 
he crossed the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. 
He and the old colleges were hail-fellow, well met; and in 
the quadrangles, he " walked gowned." 

There is a character of a gentleman ; so there is a char- 
acter of a scholar, which is no less easily recognised. The 
one has an air of books about him, as the other has of 
good-breeding. The one wears his thoughts as the other 
does his clothes, gracefully; and even if they are a little 
old-fashioned, they are not ridiculous : they have had their 
day. The gentleman shows, by his manner, that he has 
been used to respect from others : the scholar that he lays 
claim to self-respect and to a certain independence of 
opinion. The one has been accustomed to the best com- 
pany; the other has passed his time in cultivating an inti- 



On the Conversation of Authors 313 

macy with the best authors. There is nothing forward or 
vulgar in the behaviour of the one ; nothing shrewd or 
petulant in the observations of the other, as if he should 
astonish the bye-standers, of was astonished himself at his 
own discoveries. Good taste and good sense, like common 
politeness, are, or are supposed to be, matters of course. 
One is distinguished by an appearance of marked attention 
to every one present ; the other, manifests an habitual air of 
abstraction and absence of mind. The one is not an upstart 
with all the self-important airs of the founder of his own 
fortune; nor the other a self-taught man, with the repulsive 
self-sufficiency which arises from an ignorance of what 
hundreds have l?hown before him. We must excuse per- 
haps a little conscious family-pride in the one, and a little 
harmless pedantry in the other. — As there is a class of the 
first character which sinks into the mere gentleman, that 
is, wdiich has nothing but this sense of respectability and 
propriety to support it — so the character of a scholar not 
un frequently dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, 
till nothing is left of it but the mere book-worm. There 
is often something amiable as well as enviable in this last 
character. I know one such instance, at least. The person 
I mean has an admiration for learning, if he is only dazzled 
by its light. He lives among old authors, if he does not 
enter much into their spirit. He handles the covers, and 
turns over the page, and is familiar with the names and 
dates. He is busy and self-involved. He hangs like a film 
and cobweb upon letters, or is like the dust upon the outside 
of knowledge, which should not be rudely brushed aside. 
He follows learning as its shadow ; but as such, he is re- 
spectable. He browzes on the husk and leaves of books, 
as the young fawn browzes on the bark and leaves of trees. 
Such a one lives all his life in a dream of learning, and has 
never once had his sleep broken by a real sense of thing^s. 



314 English Literature 

He believes implicitly in genius, truth, virtue, liberty, be- 
cause he finds the names of these things in books, He 
thinks that love and friendship are the finest things imag- 
inable, both in practice and theory. The legend of good 
w^omen is to him no fiction. When he steals from the twi- 
light of his cell, the scene breaks upon him like an illumi- 
nated missal, and all the people he sees are but so many 
figures in a camera obsciira. He reads the world, like a 
favourite volume, only to find beauties in it, or Hke an 
edition of some old work which he is preparing for the 
press, only to make emendations in it, and correct the errors 
that have inadvertently slipt in. He and his dog Tray are 
much the same honest, simple-hearted, faithful, affectionate 
creatures — if Tray could but read ! His mind cannot take 
the impression of vice : but the gentleness of his nature 
turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws 
the picture of mankind from the guileless simplicity of his 
own heart : and when he dies, his spirit will take its smiling 
leave, without having ever had an ill thought of others, or 
the consciousness of one in itself! 



XIX 

OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 

" Come like shadows — so depart." 

B it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as 

well as the defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to 
execute. As, however, he would undertake neither, I sup- 
pose I must do both — a task for which he would have been 
much fitter, no less from the temerity than the felicity of 
his pen — 

" Never so sure our rapture to create 
As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate." 

Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a common- 
place piece of business of it ; but I should be loth the idea 
was entirely lost, and besides I may avail myself of some 
hints of his in the progress of it. I am sometimes, I sus- 
pect, a better reporter of the ideas of other people than 
expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into 
paradox or mysticism ; the others I am not bound to follow 
farther than I like, or than seems fair and reasonable. 

On the question being started, A said, " I suppose 

the two first persons you would choose to see would be 
the two greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac 

Newton and i\Ir. Locke?" In this A , as usual, 

reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laugh- 
ing at the expression of B 's face, in which impatience 

was restrained by courtesy. " Yes, the greatest names," he 
stammered out hastily, " but they were not persons — not 

315 



3i6 English Literature 

persons." — "Not persons?" said A , looking wise and 

foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be pre- 
mature. '' That is," rejoined B , " not characters, you 

know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean 
the Essay on the Human Understanding, and the Principia, 
which we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is 
nothing personally interesting in the men. But what we 
want to see any one bodily for, is when there is something 
pecuHar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn 
from their writings, and yet are curious to know. I dare 
say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller's portraits 
of them. But who could paint Shakspeare?" — "Ay," 

retorted A , " there it is ; then I suppose you would 

prefer seeing him and Milton instead?" — "No," said 

B , " neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on 

the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantle- 
pieces, that I am quite tired of the everlasting repetition : 
and as to Milton's face, the impressions that have come 
down to us of it I do not like ; it is too starched and 
puritanical ; and I should be afraid of losing some of the 
manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and 
the precisian's band and gown." — " I shall guess no more," 

said A . " Who is it, then, you would like to see ' in his 

habit as he lived,' if you had your choice of the whole 

range of Enghsh Hterature?" B then named Sir 

Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip 
Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the 
greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment 
in their night-gown and slippers, and to exchange friendly 

greeting with them. At this A laughed outright, and 

conceived B was jesting with him; but as no one fol- 
lowed his example, he thought there might be something 
in it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical 
suspense. B then (as well as I can remember a con- 



Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen 317 

versation that passed twenty years ago — how time sHps!) 
went on as follows. '' The reason why I pitch upon these 
two authors is, that their writings are riddles, and they 
themselves the most mysterious of personages. They re- 
semble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and 
doubtful oracles ; and I should like to ask them the meaning 
of what no mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can 
fathom. There is Dr. Johnson, I have no curiosity, no 
strange uncertainty about him : he and Boswell together 
have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed 
through his mind. He and other writers like him are suf- 
ficiently explicit : my friends, whose repose I should be 
tempted to disturb, (were it in my power) are implicit, 
inextricable, inscrutable. 

" And call up him who left half-told 
The story of Cambuscan bold." 

" When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-com- 
position (the Urn-burial) I seem to myself to look into a 
deep abyss, at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich 
treasure; or it is like a stately labyrinth of doubt and 
withering speculation, and I would invoke the spirit of the 
author to lead me through it. Besides, who would not be 
curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having himself 
been twice married, wished that mankind were propagated 
like trees ! As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one 
of his own ' Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king 
of Ormus,' a truly formidable and inviting personage : his 
style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an 
apparition to untie; and for the unravelling a passage or 
two, I would stand the brunt of an encounter with so por- 
tentous a commentator ! " — " I am afraid in that case," said 

A , '' that if the mystery were once cleared up, the 

merit might be lost ; " — and turning to me, whispered a 



3i8 English Literature 

friendly apprehension, that while B continued to ad- 
mire these old crabbed authors, he would never become 
a popular writer. Dr. Donne was mentioned as a writer 
of the same period, with a very interesting countenance, 
whose history was singular, and whose meaning was often 
quite as uncomeatahle, without a personal citation from the 
dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. The volume was 
produced; and while some one was expatiating on the ex- 
quisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait prefixed to the 

old edition, A got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming, 

*' What have we here ? " read the following : — 

" Here lies a She-Sim and a He-Moon there, 
She gives th© best light to his sphere, 
Or each is both and all, and so 
They unto one another nothing owe." 

There was no resisting this, till B , seizing the volume, 

turned to the beautiful " Lines to his Mistress," dissuading 
her from accompanying him abroad, and read them with 
suffused features and a faltering tongue. 

" By our first strange and fatal interview, 
By all desires which thereof did ensue, 
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse 
Which my wards' masculine persuasive force 
Begot in thee, and by the memory 
Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten'd me, 
I calmly beg. But by thy father's wrath. 
By all pains which want and divorcement hath, 
I conjure thee; and all the oaths which I 
And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy 
Here I unswear, and overswear them thus. 
Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous. 
Temper, oh fair Love ! love's impetuous rage, 
Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd Page; 
I'll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind 
Thee ! only worthy to nurse it in my mind. 
Thirst to come back ; oh, if thou die before, 
My soul from other lands to thee shall soar. 



Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen 319 

Thy (else Almighty) beauty cannot move 

Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, 

Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness ; thou hast read 

How roughly he in pieces shivered 

Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd. 

Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have prov'd 

Dangers unurg'd : Feed on this flattery, 

That absent lovers one with th' other be. 

Dissemble nothing, not a boy; nor change 

Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange 

To thyself only. All will spy in thy face 

A blushing, womanly, discovering grace. 

Richly . cloth'd apes are called apes, and as soon 

Eclips'd as bright we call the moon the moon. 

Men of France, changeable cameleons, 

Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions. 

Love's fuellers, and the rightest company 

Of players, which upon the world's stage be. 

Will quickly know thee. . . . O stay here ! for thee 

England is only a worthy gallery. 

To walk in expectation; till from thence 

Our greatest King call thee to his presence. 

When I am gone, dream me some happiness, 

Nor let thy looks our long hid love confess, 

Nor praise, nor dispraise me; nor bless, nor curse 

Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse 

With midnight startings, crying out. Oh, oh, 

Nurse, oh, my love is slain, I saw him go 

O'er the white Alps alone ; I saw him, I, 

Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die. 

Augur me better chance, except dread Jove 

Think it enough for me to have had thy love." 

Some one then inquired of B if we could not see 

from the window the Temple-walk in which Chaucer used 
to take his exercise ; and on his name being put to the vote, 
I was pleased to find that there was a general sensation in 

his favour in all but A , who said something about the 

ruggedness of the metre, and even objected to the quaint- 
ness of the orthography. I was vexed at this superficial 
gloss, pertinaciously reducing every thing to its own trite 
level, and asked " if he did not think it would be worth 



320 English Literature 

while to scan the e3'e that had first greeted the Muse in 
that dim twiUght and early dawn of English literature; 
to see the head, round which the visions of fancy must 
have played like gleams of inspiration or a sudden glory; 
to watch those lips that " lisped in numbers, for the num- 
bers came " — as by a miracle, or as if the dumb should 
speak? Nor was it alone that he had been the first to 
tune his native tongue (however im_perfectly to modern 
ears) ; but he was himself a noble, manly character, stand- 
ing before his age and striving to advance it; a pleasant 
humourist wnthal, who has not only handed down to us the 
Hving manners of his time, but had, no doubt, store of 
curious and quaint devices, and would make as hearty a 
companion as Mine Host of Tabard. His interview 
with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather 
have seen Chaucer in company with the author of the 
Decameron, and have heard them exchange their best 
stories together, — the Squire's Tale against the Story of 
the Falcon, the Wife of Bath's Prologue against the Ad- 
ventures of Friar Albert. How fine to see the high mys- 
terious brow which learning then wore, relieved by the gay, 
familiar tone of men of the world, and by the courtesies 
of genius.. Surely, the thoughts and feelings which passed 
through the minds of these great revivers of learning, these 
Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have 
stamped an expression on their features, as different from 
the moderns as their books, and well worth the perusal. 
Dante," I continued, " is as interesting a person as his own 
Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly 
devour in order to penetrate his spirit, and the only one 
of the Itahan poets I should care much to see. There is 
a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's ; 
light, Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The 
same artist's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the 



\ 



Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen 321 

only likeness of the kind that has the effect of conversing 
with ' the mighty dead/ and this is truly spectral, ghastly, 

necromantic." B put it to me if I should like to see 

Spenser as well as Chaucer ; and I answered without hesi- 
tation, *' No ; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, 
not palpable or personal, and therefore connected with less 
curiosity about the man. His poetry was the essence of 
romance, a very halo round the bright orb of fancy; and 
the bringing in the individual might dissolve the charm. 
No tones of voice could come up to the mellifluous cadence 
of his verse ; no form but of a winged angel could vie 
with the airy shapes he has described. He was (to our 
apprehensions) rather a " creature of the element, that lived 
in the rainbow and played in the plighted clouds," than 
an ordinary mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it 
to be as a mere vision, like one of his own pageants, and 
that he should pass by unquestioned like a dream or sound — 

"That was Arion crown'd : 

So went he playing on the wat'ry plain ! " 

Captain C. muttered something about Columbus, and M. 
C. hinted at the Wandering Jew ; but the last was set aside 
as spurious, and the first made over to the New World. 

'' I should like," said Miss D , " to have seen Pope 

talking with Patty Blount ; and I have seen Goldsmith." 

Every one turned round to look at Miss D , as if by so 

doing they too could get a sight of Goldsmith. 

" Where," asked a harsh croaking voice, " was Dr. John- 
son in the years 1745-6? He did not write anything that 
we know of, nor is there any account of him in Boswell 
during those two years. Was he in Scotland with the 
Pretender? He seems to have passed through the scenes 
in the Highlands in company with Boswell many years 
after ' with lack-lustre eye,' yet as if they were familiar 



322 English Literature 

to him, or associated in his mind with interests that he 
durst not explain. If so, it would be an additional reason 
for my liking him ; and I would give something to have 
seen him seated in the tent with the youthful Majesty of 
Britain, and penning the Proclamation to all true subjects 
and adherents of the legitimate Government." 

" I thought," said A , turning short round upon 

B , ''that you of the Lake School did not like Pope?" 

— '' Not like Pope ! My dear sir, you must be under a 
mistake — I can read him over and over for ever! " — " Why 
certainly, the Essay on Man must be allowed to be a 
master-piece." — '' It may be so, but I seldom look into it." — 
"Oh! then it's his Satires you admire?" — "No, not his 
Satires, but his friendly Epistles and his compliments." — 
" Compliments ! I did not know he ever made any." — " The 

finest," said B , " that were ever paid by the wit of 

man. Each of them is worth an estate for life — nay, is an 
immortality. There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury: 

" Despise low joys, low gains : 
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains ; 
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains. 

" Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous 
praise ? And then that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord 
Mansfield (however little deserved), when, speaking of the 
House of Lords, he adds — 

" Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh, 
(More silent far) where kings and poets lie; 
Where Murray (long enough his Country's pride) 
Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde ! 

" And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he ad- 
dresses Lord Bolingbroke — 

" Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine, 
Oh ! all-accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine? 



Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen 323 

" Or turn," continued B , with a slight hectic on his 

cheek and his eye gHstening, " to his hst of early friends : 

"But why then publish? Granville the polite, 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ; 
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise. 
And Congreve loved and Swift endured my lays: 
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head ; 
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
Received with open arms one poet more. 
Happy my studies, if by these approved ! 
Happier their author, if by these beloved ! 
From these the world will judge of men and books, 
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks." 

Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the 
book, he said, " Do you think I would not wish to have 
been friends with such a man as this?" 

" What say you to Dryden? " — " He rather made a show 
of himself, and courted popularity in that lowest temple of 
Fame, a coffee-house, so as in some measure to vulgarize 
one's idea of him. Pope, on the contrary, reached the very 
heau ideal of what a poet's Hfe should be ; and his fame 
while living seemed to be an emanation from that which 
was to circle his name after death. He was so far enviable 
(and one would feel proud to have witnessed the rare 
spectacle in him) that he was almost the only poet and man 
of genius who met with his reward on this side of the 
tomb, who realized in friends, fortune, the esteem of the 
world, the most sanguine hopes of a youthful ambition, and 
who found that sort of patronage from the great during his 
lifetime which they would be thought anxious to bestow 
upon him after his death. Read Gay's verses to him on his 
supposed return from Greece, after his translation of 
Homer was finished, and say if you would not gladly join 
the bright procession that welcomed him home, or see it 
once more land at Whitehall-stairs." — '' Still," said Miss 



324 English Literature 

D , " I would rather have seen him talking with Patty 

Blount, or riding by in a coronet-coach with Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu ! " 

E , who was deep in a game of piquet at the other 

end of the room, whispered to M. C. to ask if Junius would 
not be a fit person to invoke from the dead. " Yes," said 
B , " provided he would agree to lay aside his mask." 

We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding 
was mentioned as a candidate : only one, however, seconded 
the proposition. '' Richardson ? " — '' By all means, but only 
to look at him through the glass-door of his back-shop, 
hard at work upon one of his novels (the most extraor- 
dinary contrast that ever was presented between an author 
and his works), but not to let him come behind his counter 
lest he should want you to turn customer, nor to go upstairs 
with him, lest he should offer to read the first manuscript of 
Sir Charles Grandison, which was originally written in 
eight and twenty volumes octavo, or get out the letters of 
his female correspondents, to prove that Joseph Andrews 
was low." 

There was but one statesman in the whole of English 
history that any one expressed the least desire to see — 
Oliver Cromwell, with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face, 
and wily policy; and one enthusiast, John Bunyan, the im- 
mortal author of the Pilgrim's Progress. It seemed that 
if he came into the room, dreams would follow him, and 
that each person would nod under his golden cloud, '' nigh- 
sphered in Heaven," a canopy as strange and stately as any 
in Homer. 

Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was 
received with the greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed 

by J. F . He presently superseded both Hogarth and 

Handel, who had been talked of, but then it was on con- 
dition that he should act in tragedy and comedy, in the 



Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen 325 

play and the farce, Lear and Wildair and Abel Drugger. 
What a sight for sore eyes that would be! Who would 
not part with a year's income at least, almost with a year 
of his natural Hfe, to be present at it? Besides, as he could 
not act alone, and recitations are unsatisfactory things, 
wdiat a troop he must bring with him — the silver-tongued 
Barry, and Quin, and Shuter and Weston, and Mrs. Clive 
and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have heard my father speak 
as so great a favourite when he was young! This would 
indeed be a revival of the dead, the restoring of art; and 
so much the more desirable, as such is the lurking scep- 
ticism mingled with our overstrained admiration of past 
excellence, that though we have the speeches of Burke, the 
portraits of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith, and the 
conversation of Johnson, to show what people could do at 
that period, and to confirm the universal testimony to the 
merits of Garrick; yet, as it was before our time, we have 
our misgivings, as if he was probably after all little better 
than a Bartlemy-fair actor, dressed out to play Macbeth in 
a scarlet coat and laced cocked-hat. For one, I should like 
to have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears. Cer- 
tainly, by all accounts, if any one was ever moved by the 
true histrionic oestiis, it was Garrick. When he followed 
the Ghost in Hamlet, he did not drop the sword as most 
actors do behind the scenes, but kept the point raised the 
whole way round, so fully was he possessed with the idea, 
or so anxious not to lose sight of his part for a moment. 
Once at a splendid dinner-party at Lord 's, they sud- 
denly missed Garrick, and could not imagine what was 
become of him, till they were drawn to the window by the 
convulsive screams and peals of laughter of a young negro- 
boy, who was rolling on the ground in an ecstasy of delight 
to see Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the court-yard, 
with his coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a seeming flutter 



326 English Literature 

of feathered rage and pride. Of our party only two persons 
present had seen the British Roscius ; and they seemed as 
wilHng as the rest to renew their acquaintance with their 
old favourite. 

We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of 
this fanciful speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who 
declared it was a shame to make all this rout about a mere 
player and farce-writer, to the neglect and exclusion of the 
fine old dramatists, the contemporaries and rivals of Shak- 

speare. B- said he had anticipated this objection when 

he had named the author of Mustapha and Alaham ; and 
out of caprice insisted upon keeping him to represent the 
set, in preference to the wild hair-brained enthusiast Kit 
Marlowe; to the sexton of St. Ann's, Webster, with his 
melancholy yew-trees and death's-heads ; to Deckar, who 
was but a garrulous proser ; to the voluminous Heywood ; 
and even to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we might offend 
by complimenting the wrong author on their joint produc- 
tions. Lord Brook, on the contrary, stood quite by himself, 
or in Cowley's words, was " a vast species alone." Some 
one hinted at the circumstance of his being a lord, which 

rather startled B , but he said a ghost would perhaps 

dispense with strict etiquette, on being regularly addressed 
by his title. Ben Jonson divided our suffrages pretty 
equally. Some were afraid he would begin to traduce Shak- 
speare, who was not present to defend himself. '' If he 
grows disagreeable," it was whispered aloud, " there is 

G can match him." At length his romantic visit to 

Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and turned 
the scale in his favour. 

B inquired if there was any one that was hanged that 

I would choose to mention? And I answered, Eugene 

Aram.* The name of the " Admirable Crichton " was sud- 

* See Newgate Calendar for 1758. 



Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen 327 

denly started as a splendid example of waste talents, so dif- 
ferent from the generality of his countrymen. This choice 
was mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who de- 
clared himself descended from that prodigy of learning 
and accomplishment, and said he had family-plate in his 
possession as vouchers for the fact, with the initials A. C. — 

Admirable Crichton! H— laughed or rather roared as 

heartily at this as I should think he has done for many 
years. 

The last-named Mitre-courtier * then wished to know 
whether there were any metaphysicians to whom one might 
be tempted to apply the wizard spell? I replied, there were 
only six in modern times deserving the name — Hobbes, 
Berkeley, Butler, Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz ; and perhaps 
Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts man.f As to the 
French, who talked fluently of having created this science, 
there was not a tittle in any of their writings, that was 
not to be found literally in the authors I had mentioned. 
[Home Tooke, who might have a claim to come in under 
the head of Grammar, was still living.] None of these 
names seemed to excite much interest, and I did not plead 
for the re-appearance of those who might be thought best 
fitted by the abstracted nature of their studies for their 
present spiritual and disembodied state, and who, even while 



* B at this time occupied chambers in Mitre-court, Fleet-street. 

t Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he 
should come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his 
reputation together. This great and celebrated man in some of his 
works recommends it to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of 
a morning, and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So he 
sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil of speculation with 
the fine aromatic spirit of his genius. His " Essays " and his " Ad- 
vancement of Learning " are works of vast depth and scope of 
observation. The last, though it contains no positive discoveries, 
is a noble chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all future 
inquirers. 



S2S English Literature 

on this living stage, were nearly divested of common flesh 

and blood. As A v^ith an uneasy fidgetty face was 

about to put some question about Mr. Locke and Dugald 
Stewart, he was prevented by M. C, who observed, " If 

J was here, he would undoubtedly be for having 

up those profound and redoubted scholiasts, Thomas 
Aquinas and Duns Scotus." I said; this might be fair 
enough in him who had read or fancied he had read 
the original works, but I did not see how we could 
have any right to call up these authors to give an 
account of themselves in person, till we had looked into 
their writings. 

By this time it should seem that some rumour of our 
whimsical deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the 
irritable genus in their shadowy abodes, for we received 
messages from several candidates that we had just been 
thinking of. Gray declined our invitation, though he had 
not yet been asked : Gay offered to come and bring in 
his hand the Duchess of Bolton, the original Polly: Steele 
and Addison left their cards as Captain Sentry and Sir 
Roger de Coverley: Swift came in and sat down without 
speaking a word, and quitted the room as abruptly: Otway 
and Chatterton were seen Hngering on the opposite side 
of the Styx, but could not muster enough between them 
to pay Charon his fare : Thomson fell asleep in the boat, 
and was rowed back again — and Burns sent a low fellow, 
one John Barleycorn, an old companion of his who had 
conducted him to the other world, to say that he had during 
his lifetime been drawn out of his retirement as a show, 
only to be made an exciseman of, and that he would rather 
remain where he was. He desired, however, to shake hands 
by his representative — the hand, thus held out, was in a 
burning fever, and shook prodigiously. 

The room was hung round with several portraits of 



Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen 329 

eminent painters. While we were debating whether we 
should demand speech with these masters of mute eloquence, 
whose features were so familiar to us, it seemed that all 
at once they glided from their frames, and seated them- 
selves at some little distance from us. There was Leonardo 
with his majestic beard and watchful eye, having a bust 
of Archimedes before him ; next him was Raphael's grace- 
ful head turned round to the Fornarina ; and on his other 
side was Lucretia Borgia, with calm, golden locks ; Michael 
Angelo had placed the model of St. Peter's on the table 
before him ; Correggio had an angel at his side ; Titian 
was seated with his Mistress between himself and Giorgioni ; 
Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora, who took a 
dice-box from him ; Claude held a mirror in his hand ; 
Rubens patted a beautiful panther (led in by a satyr) on 
the head ; Vandyke appeared as his own Paris, and Rem- 
brandt was hid under furs, gold chains and jewels, which 
Sir Joshua eyed closely, holding his hand so as to shade his 
forehead. Not a word was spoken; and as we rose to do 
them homage, they still presented the same surface to the 
view. Not being bond-fide representations of living people, 
we got rid of the splendid apparitions by signs and dumb 
show. As soon as they had melted into thin air, there 
was a loud noise at the outer door, and we found it was 
Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio, who had been raised 
from the dead by their earnest desire to see their illustrious 
successors — 

" Whose names on earth 
In Fame's eternal records live for aye ! " 

Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after 

them, and mournfully withdrew. "Egad!" said B , 

" those are the very fellows I should like to have had some 



330 English Literature 

talk with, to know how they could see to paint when all was 
dark around them ? " 

'' But shall we have nothing to say," interrogated G. 

J , "to the Legend of Good Women?" — ''Name, 

name, Mr. J ," cried H in a boisterous tone of 

friendly exultation, " name as many as you please, without 
reserve or fear of molestation ! " J was perplexed be- 
tween so many amiable recollections, that the name of the- 
lady of his choice expired in a pensive whiff of his pipe; 
and B impatiently declared for the Duchess of New- 
castle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner mentioned, than 
she carried the day from the Duchess. We were the less 
solicitous on this subject of filling up the posthumous lists 
of Good Women, as there was already one in the room as 
good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, as the 
best of them could be for their lives ! " I should like vastly 
to have seen Ninon de I'Enclos," said that incomparable 
person ; and this immediately put us in mind that we had 
neglected to pay honour due to our friends on the other 
side of the Channel : Voltaire, the patriarch of levity, and 
Rousseau, the father of sentiment, Montaigne and Rabelais 
(great in wisdom and in wit), Moliere and that illustrio:^s 
group that are collected round him (in the print of that 
subject) to hear him read his comedy of the Tartuife at 
the house of Ninon; Racine, La Fontaine, Rochefoucault, 
St. Evremont, etc. 

" There is one person," said a shrill, querulous voice, " I 
would rather see than all these — Don Quixote ! " 

" Come, come ! " said H ; '' I thought we should have 

no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. B ? 

Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names 
as Alexander, JuHus Caesar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan? " 

— " Excuse me," said B , " on the subject of characters 

in active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have 



Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen 331 

a crotchet of my own, which I beg leave to reserve." — 
" No, no ! come, out with your worthies ! " — " What do you 

think of Guy Faux and Judas Iscariot?" H turned 

an eye upon him Hke a wild Indian, but cordial and full of 
smothered glee. *' Your most exquisite reason!" was 

echoed on all sides ; and A thought that B had now 

fairly entangled himself. " Why, I cannot but think," re- 
torted he of the wistful countenance, " that Guy Faux, 
that poor fluttering annual scare-crow of straw and rags, is 
an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him 
sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and 
his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that 
was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devo- 
tion ; but if I say any more, there is that fellow G will 

make something of it. — And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason 
is different. I would fain see the face of him, who, having 
dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, 
could afterwards betray him. I have no conception of such 
a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even 
Leonardo's very fine one) that gave me the least idea of 

it." — " You have said enough, Mr. B , to justify your 

choice." 

" Oh ! ever right, Menenius, — ever right ! " 

" There is only one other person I can ever think of after 

this," continued H ; but without mentioning a name 

that once put on a semblance of mortality. " If Shakspeare 
was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet 
him ; but if that person was to come into it, w^e should all 
fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment ! " 

As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn 
the conversation had taken, w^e rose up to go. The morning 
broke with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cima- 
bue, and Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest 
works ; and we parted to meet again and renew similar 



332 English- Literature 

topics at night, the next night, and the night after that, till 
that night overspread Europe which saw no dawn. The 
same event, in truth, broke up our Httle Congress that broke" 
up the great one. But that was to meet again : our delib- 
erations have never been resumed. 



XX 

ON READING OLD BOOKS 

I HATE to read new books. There are twenty or thirty 
volumes that I have read over and over again, and these 
are the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at 
all. It was a long time before I could bring myself to sit 
down to the Tales of My Landlord, but now that author's 
works have made a considerable addition to my scanty 
library. I am told that some of Lady Morgan's are good, 
and have been recommended to look into Anastasius ; but I 
have not yet^ ventured upon that task. A lady, the other 
day, could not refrain from expressing her surprise to a 
friend, who said he had been reading Delphine : — she 
asked, — If it had not been published some time back? 
Women judge of books as they do of fashions or com- 
plexions, which are admired only " in their newest gloss." 
That is not my way. I am not one of those who trouble 
the circulating libraries much, or pester the booksellers for 
mail-coach copies of standard periodical publications. I 
cannot say that I am greatly addicted to black-letter, but 
I profess myself well versed in the marble bindings of 
Andrew Millar, in the middle of the last century ; nor does 
my taste revolt at Thurloe's State Papers, in Russia leather ; 
or an ample impression of Sir WilHam Temple's Essays, 
with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in front. I do 
not think altogether the worse of a book for having sur- 
vived the author a generation or two. I have more con- 
fidence in the dead than the living. Contemporary writers 

333 



334 English Literature 

may generally be divided into two classes — one's friends 
or one's foes. Of the first we are compelled to think too 
well, and of the last we are disposed to think too ill, to 
receive much genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to judge 
fairly of the merits of either. One candidate for literary 
fame, who happens to be of our acquaintance, writes finely, 
and like a man of genius ; but unfortunately has a foolish 
face, which spoils a delicate passage : — another inspires us 
with the highest respect for his personal talents and char- 
acter, but does not quite come up to our expectations in 
print. All these contradictions and petty details interrupt 
the calm current of our reflections. If you want to know 
what any of the authors were who Hved before our time, 
and are still objects of anxious inquiry, you have only 
to look into their works. But the dust and smoke and noise 
of modern literature have nothing in common w4th the 
pure, silent air of immortality. 

When I take up a work that I have read before (the 
oftener the better) I know what I have to expect. The 
satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. When 
the entertainment is altogether new, I sit down to it as 
I should to a strange dish, — turn and pick out a bit here 
and there, and am in doubt what to think of the composi- 
tion. There is a want of confidence and security to second 
appetite. New-fangled books are also like made-dishes in 
this respect, that they are generally little else than hashes 
and rifaccimcntos of what has been served up entire and 
in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in thus 
turning to a well-known author, there is not only an as- 
surance that my time will not be thrown away, or my palate 
nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash, — but I shake 
hands with, and look an old, tried, and valued friend in the 
face, — compare notes, and chat the hours away. It is true, 
we form dear friendships with such ideal guests — dearer, 



On Reading Old Books 335 

alas ! and more lasting, than those with our most intimate 
acquaintance. In reading a book which is an old favourite 
with me (say the first novel I ever read) I not only have 
the pleasure of imagination and of a critical relish of the 
work, but the pleasures of memory added to it. It recalls 
the same feelings and associations which I had in first 
reading it, and which I can never have again in any other 
way. Standard productions of this kind are links in the 
chain of our conscious being. They bind together the dif- 
ferent scattered divisions of our personal identity. They 
are land-marks and guides in our journey through life. 
They are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or 
from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of 
a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the 
tokens and records of our happiest hours. They are " for 
thoughts and for remembrance ! " They are like For- 
tunatus's Wishing-Cap — they give us the best riches — those 
of Fancy ; and transport us, not over half the globe, but 
(which is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice! 

My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. 
Give me for this purpose a volume of Peregrine Pickle or 
Tom Jones. Open either of them anywhere — at the Mem- 
oirs of Lady Vane, or the adventures at the masquerade 
with Lady Bellaston, or the disputes between Thwackum 
and Square, or the escape of Molly Seagrim, or the incident 
of Sophia and her muff, or the edifying prolixity of her 
aunt's lecture — and there I find the same deHghtful, busy, 
bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I 
was first introduced into the midst of it. Nay, sometimes 
the sight of an odd volume of these good old English 
authors on a stall, or the name lettered on the back among 
others on the shelves of a Hbrary, answers the purpose, 
revives the whole train of ideas, and sets '* the puppets 
dallying." Twenty years are struck off the list, and I am 



336 English Literature 

a child again. A sage philosopher, who was not a very 
wise man, said, that he should like very well to be young 
again, if he could take his experience along with him. 
This ingenious person did not seem to be aware, by the 
gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of being 
young is to be without this weight of experience, which he 
would fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and which 
never comes too late with years. Oh! what a privilege to 
be able to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop 
from off one's back, and transport one's-self, by the help 
of a little musty duodecimo, to the time when " ignorance 
was bliss," and when we first got a peep at the raree-show 
of the world, through the glass of fiction — gazing at man- 
kind, as we do at wild beasts in a menagerie, through the 
bars of their cages, — or at curiosities in a museum, that 
we must not touch ! For myself, not only are the old ideas 
of the contents of the work brought back to my mind in 
all their vividness, but the old associations of the faces and 
persons of those I then knew, as they were in their life- 
time — the place where I sat to read the volume, the day 
when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky — 
return, and all my early impressions with them. This is 
better to me — those places, those times, those persons, and 
those feelings that come across me as I retrace the story 
and devour the page, are to me better far than the wet 
sheets of the last new novel from the Ballantyne press, to 
say nothing of the Minerva press in Leadenhall-street. It 
is like visiting the scenes of early youth. I think of the 
time " when I was in my father's house, and my path ran 
down with butter and honey," — when I was a little, thought- 
less child, and had no other wish or care but to con my 
daily task, and be happy! — Tom Jones, I remember, was 
the first work that broke the spell. It came down in num.- 
bers once a fortnight, in Cooke's pocket-edition, embel- 



On Reading Old Books 337 

Hshed with cuts. I had hitherto read only in school-books, 
and a tiresome ecclesiastical history (with the exception 
of Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest) : but this had 
a different relish with it, — " sweet in the mouth," though 
not " bitter in the belly." It smacked of the world I lived 
in, and in which I was to live — and shewed me groups, 
" gay creatures " not '' of the element," but of the earth ; 
not " hving in the clouds," but travelling the same road 
that I did ; — some that had passed on before me, and others 
that might soon overtake me. My heart had palpitated at 
the thoughts of a boarding-school ball, or gala-day at Mid- 
summer or Christmas : but the world I had found out in 
Cooke's edition of the British Novelists was to me a dance 
through life, a perpetual gala-day. The six-penny numbers 
of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the 
middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom 
Jones discovers Square behind the blanket ; or where Parson 
Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very unde- 
signedly gets to bed to- Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution 
the reader against this impression of Joseph Andrews ; 
for there is a picture of Fanny in it which he should not 
set his heart on, lest he should never meet with anything 
like it ; or if he should, it would, perhaps, be better for 

him that he had not. It was just like ! With 

what eagerness I used to look forward to the next number, 
and open the prints ! Ah ! never again shall I feel the 
enthusiastic delight with which I gazed at the figures, and 
anticipated the story and adventures of Major Bath and 
Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and my Uncle Toby, of Don 
Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil Bias and Dame 
Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, whose lips 
open and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas 
did they give rise, — with what airy delights I filled up the 
outlines, as I hung in silence over the page! — Let me still 



33^ English Literature 

recal them, that they may breathe fresh Hfe into me, and 
that I may live that birthday of thought and romantic 
pleasure over again! Talk of the ideal! This is the only 
true ideal — the heavenly tints of Fancy reflected in the 
bubbles that float upon the spring-tide of human life. 

Oh! Memory! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
And give those scenes thine everlasting life ! 

The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling 
than it was; the reader will, by this time, have been let 
into my secret. Much about the same time, or I believe 
rather earlier, I took a particular satisfaction in reading 
Chubb's Tracts, and I often think I will get them again 
to wade through. There is a high gusto of polemical 
divinity in them; and you fancy that you hear a club of 
shoemakers at Salisbury, debating a disputable text from 
one of St. Paul's Epistles in a workmanlike style, with equal 
shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say much for my 
metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after 
with great ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I 
was presently entangled in the briars and thorns of subtle 
distinctions, — of " fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," 
though I cannot add that " in their wandering mazes I 
found no end;" for I did arrive at some very satisfactory 
and potent conclusions ; nor will I go so far, however un- 
grateful the subject might seem, as to exclaim with Mar- 
lowe's Faustus — " Would I had never seen Wittenberg, 
never read book " — that is, never studied such authors as 
Hartley, Hume, Berkeley, etc. Locke's Essay on the 
Human Understanding is, however, a work from which I 
never derived either pleasure or profit ; and Hobbes, dry 
and powerful as he is, I did not read till long afterwards. 
I read a few poets, which did not much hit my taste, — for 
I would have the reader understand, I am deficient in the 



On Reading Old Books 339 

faculty of imagination ; but I fell early upon French ro- 
mances and philosophy, and devoured them tooth-and-nail. 
Many a dainty repast have I made of the New Eloise ; — 
the description of the kiss; the excursion on the water; 
the letter of St. Preux, recalling the time of their first 
loves ; and the account of Julia's death ; these I read over 
and over again with unspeakable delight and wonder. Some 
years after, when I met with this work again, I found I 
had lost nearly my whole relish for it (except some few 
parts) and was, I remember, very much mortified with the 
change in my taste, which I sought to attribute to the small- 
ness and gilt edges of the edition I had bought, and its 
being perfumed with rose-leaves. Nothing could exceed 
the gravity, the solemnity with which I carried home and 
read the Dedication to the Social Contract, with some other 
pieces of the same author, which I had picked up at a stall 
in a coarse leathern cover. Of the Confessions I have 
spoken elsewhere, and may repeat what I have said — 
" Sweet is the dew of their memory, and pleasant the balm 
of their recohection ! " Their beauties are not " scattered 
Hke stray-gifts o'er the earth," but sown thick on the page, 
rich and rare. I wish I had never read the Emilius, or 
read it with less implicit faith. I had no occasion to pamper 
my natural aversion to affectation or pretence, by romantic 
and artificial means. I had better have formed myself on 
the model of Sir Fopling Flutter. There is a class of 
persons whose virtues and most shining qualities sink in, 
and are concealed by, an absorbent ground of modesty and 
reserve ; and such a one I do, without vanity, profess 
myself.* Now these are the very persons who are likely 

* Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by 
a friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed 
to write, returned on his hands for their too great severity of 
thought and classical terseness of style, and who observed on that 
occasion, that " Modest merit never can succeed ! " 



340 English Literature 

to attach themselves to the character of EmiHus, and of 
whom it is sure to be the bane. This dull, phlegmatic, 
retiring humour is not in a fair way to be corrected, but 
confirmed and rendered desperate, by being in that work 
held up as an object of imitation, as an example of sim- 
plicity and magnanimity — by coming upon us with all the 
recommendations of novelty, surprise, and superiority to 
the prejudices of the world — by being stuck upon a pedestal, 
made amiable, dazzling, a leurre de dupe! The reliance on 
solid worth which it inculcates, the preference of sober 
truth to gaudy tinsel, hangs like a mill-stone round the neck 
of the imagination — " a load to sink a navy " — impedes our 
progress, arid blocks up every prospect in life. A man, to 
get on, to be successful, conspicuous, applauded, should 
not retire upon the centre of his conscious resources, but 
be always at the circumference of appearances. He must 
envelop himself in a halo of mystery — he must ride in an 
equipage of opinion — he must walk with a train of self- 
conceit following him — he must not strip himself to a bufif- 
jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his real merits, but must 
surround himself with a cortege of prejudices, like the signs 
of the Zodiac — he must seem any thing but what he is, and 
then he may pass for any thing he pleases. The world 
love to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by 
flattering .appearances, to live in a state of hallucination ; 
and can forgive every thing but the plain, downright, sim- 
ple honest truth — such as we see it chalked out in the char- 
acter of Emilius. — To return from this digression, which is 
a little out of place here. 

Books have in a great measure lost their power over 
me ; nor can I revive the same interest in them as formerly. 
I perceive when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is 
true, 

Marcian Colonna is a dainty book; 



On Reading Old Books 341 

and the reading of Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately 
made me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful 
and tender images there conjured up, " come like shadows 
— so depart." The " tiger-moth's wings," which he has 
spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my 
fancy; the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted 
over again in his verse, to me " blushes " almost in vain 
'' with blood of queens and kings." I know how I should 
have felt at one time in reading such passages ; and that 
is all. The sharp luscious flavour, the fine aroma is fled, 
and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of hterature 
is left. If any one were to ask me what I read now, I 
might answer with my Lord Hamlet in the play — " Words, 
words, words." — ''What is the matter?" — "Nothing!" — 
They have scarce a meaning. But it was not always so. 
There was a time when to my thinking, every word was a 
flower or a pearl, like those which dropped from the mouth 
of the little peasant-girl in the Fairy tale, or like those that 
fall from the great preacher in the Caledonian Chapel ! I 
drank of the stream of knowledge that tempted, but did 
not mock my lips, as of the river of life, freely. How 
eagerly I slaked my thirst of German sentiment, '' as the 
hart that panteth for the water-springs ; " how I bathed 
and revelled, and added my floods of tears to Goethe's 
Sorrows of Werter, and to Schiller's Robbers — 

Giving my stock of more to that which had too much ! 

I read and assented with all my soul to Coleridge's fine 
Sonnet, begininng — 

Schiller ! that hour I would have wish'd to die, 
If through the shuddering midnight I had sent, 
From the dark dungeon of the tow'r time-rent, 
That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry! 



342 English Literature 

I believe I may date my insight into the mysteries of 
poetry from the commencement of my acquaintance with 
the authors of the Lyrical Ballads ; at least, my discrimina- 
tion of the higher sorts — not my predilection for such 
writers as Goldsmith or Pope : nor do I imagine they will 
say I got my liking for the Novelists, or the comic writers, 
— for the characters of Valentine, Tattle, or Miss Prue, 
from them. If so, I must have got from them what they 
never had themselves. In points where poetic diction and 
conception are concerned, I may be at a loss, and liable to 
be imposed upon : but in forming an estimate of passages 
relating to common life and manners, I cannot think I am 
a plagiarist from any man. I there " know my cue without 
a prompter." I may say of such studies — Intus et in cute. 
I am just able to admire those literal touches of observa- 
tion and description, which persons of loftier pretensions 
overlook and despise. I think I comprehend something 
of the characteristic part of Shakspeare ; and in him indeed 
all is characteristic, even the nonsense and poetry. I 
believe it was the celebrated Sir Humphry Davy who used 
to say, that Shakspeare was rather a metaphysician than 
a poet. At any rate, it was not ill said. I wish that I had 
sooner known the dramatic writers contemporary with 
Shakspeare; for in looking them over about a year ago, 
I almost revived my old passion for reading, and my old 
delight in books, though they were very nearly new to me. 
The Periodical Essayists I read long ago. The Spectator 
I liked extremely : but the Tatler took my fancy most. I 
read the others soon after, the Rambler, the Adventurer, the 
World, the Connoisseur : I was not sorry to get to the end 
of them, and have no desire to go regularly through them 
again. I consider myself a thorough adept in Richardson. 
I like the longest of his novels best, and think no part of 
them tedious ; nor should I ask to have any thing better to 



On Reading Old Books 343 

do than to read them from beginning to end, to take them 
up when I chose, and lay them down when I was tired, 
in some old family mansion in the country, till every word 
and syllable relating to the bright Clarissa, the divine 
Clementina, the beautiful Pamela, " with every trick and 
line of their sweet favour," were once more " graven in my 
heart's table." ^ I have a sneaking kindness for Macken- 
zie's Julia de Roubigne — for the deserted mansion, and 
straggling gilliflowers on the mouldering garden-wall ; and 
still more for his Man of Feeling; not that it is better, nor 
so good; but at the time I read it, I sometimes thought of 

the heroine, Miss Walton, and of Miss together, and 

" that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken ! " — One 
of the poets that I have always read with most pleasure, 
and can wander about in for ever with a sort of voluptuous 
indolence, is Spenser ; and I like Chaucer even better. The 
only writer among the Italians I can pretend to any knowl- 
edge of, is Boccacio, and of him I cannot express half my 
admiration. His story of the Hawk I could read and think 
of from day to day, just as I would look at a picture of 
Titian's ! — 

I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a 
neighbouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid 
the plot of his Recruiting Officer) and bringing home with 
me, " at one proud swoop," a copy of Milton's Paradise 
Lost, and another of Burke's Reflections on the French 
Revolution — both which I have still ; and I still recollect, 

^ During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the 
name of Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte's levee. Instead of 
the usual question, " Where have you served, Sir? " the First Consul 
immediately addressed him, " I perceive your name, Sir, is the same 
as that of the hero of Richardson's Romance ! " Here was a Consul. 
The young man's uncle, who was called Lovelace, told me this 
anecdote while we were stopping together at Calais. I had also been 
thinking that his was the same name as that of the hero of Richard- 
son's Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking Buonaparte. 



344 English Literature 

when I see the covers, the pleasure with which I dipped into 
them as I returned with my double prize. I was set up 
for one while. That time is past " with all its giddy rap- 
tures : " but I am still anxious to preserve its memory, 
" embalmed with odours." — With respect to the first of 
these works, I would be permitted to remark here in pass- 
ing, that it is a sufficient answer to the German criticism 
which has since been started against the character of Satan 
(z'i^. that it is not one of disgusting deformity, or pure, 
defecated malice) to say that Alilton has there drawn, not 
the abstract principle of evil, not a devil incarnate, but a 
fallen angel. This is the Scriptural account, and the poet 
has followed it. We may safely retain such passages as 
that well-known one — 

His form had not 3^et lost 

All her original brightness ; nor appear'd 
Less than archangel ruin'd ; and the excess 
Of glory obscur'd — 

for the theory, which is opposed to them, " falls flat upon 
the grunsel edge, and shames its worshippers." Let us 
hear no more then of this monkish cant, and bigotted outcry 
for the restoration of the horns and tail of the devil! — 
Again, as to the other work, Burke's Reflections, I took 
a particular pride and pleasure in it, and read it to myself 
and others for months afterwards. I had reason for my 
prejudice in favour of this author. To understand an 
adversary is some praise : to admire him is more. I thought 
I did both: I knew I did one. From the first time I ever 
cast my eyes on anything of Burke's (which was an ex- 
tract from his Letter to a Noble Lord in a three-times a 
week paper, The St. James's Chronicle, in 1796), I said to 
myself, " This is true eloquence : this is a man pouring out 
his mind on paper." All other style seemed to me pedantic 



On Reading Old Books 345 

and impertinent. Dr. Johnson's was walking on stilts ; and 
even Junius's (who was at that time a favourite with me) 
with all his terseness, shrunk up into little antithetic points 
and well-trimmed sentences. But Burke's style was forked 
and playful as the lightning, crested like the serpent. He 
delivered plain things on a plain ground ; but when he rose, 
there was no end of his flights and circumgyrations — and 
in this very Letter, " he, like an eagle in a dove-cot, flut- 
tered his Volscians," (the Duke of Bedford and the Earl 
of Lauderdale'^) "in Corioli." I did not care for his doc- 
trines. I was then, and am still, proof against their con- 
tagion ; but I admired the author, and was considered as 
not a very staunch partisan of the opposite side, though I 
thought myself that an abstract proposition was one thing — 
a masterly transition, a brilliant metaphor, another. I con- 
ceived, too, that he might be wrong in his main argument, 
and yet deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion. 
I remember Coleridge assuring me, as a poetical and po- 
Htical set-off to my sceptical admiration, that Wordsworth 
had written an Essay on Marriage, which, for manly 
thought and nervous expression, he deemed incomparably 
superior. As I had not, at that time, seen any specimens 
of Mr. Wordsworth's prose style, I could not express my 
doubts on the subject. If there are greater prose-writers 
than Burke, they either lie out of my course of study, or 
are beyond my sphere of comprehension. I am too old to 
be a convert to a new mythology of genius. The niches 
are occupied, the tables are full. If such is still my admira- 
tion of this man's misapplied powers, what must it have 
been at a time when I myself was in vain trying, year after 
year, to write a single Essay, nay, a single page or sen- 
tence ; when I regarded the wonders of his pen with the 
longing eyes of one who was dumb and a changeling; and 

* He is there called " Citizen Lauderdale." Is this the present earl? 



34^ English Literature 

when, to be able to convey the sHghtest conception of my 
meaning to others in words, was the height of an almost 
hopeless ambition ! But I never measured others' excel- 
lences by my own defects: though a sense of my own 
incapacity, and of the steep, impassable ascent from me 
to them, made me regard them with greater awe and fond- 
ness. I have thus run through most of my early studies 
and favourite authors, some of whom I have since criticised 
more at large. Whether those observations will survive 
me, I neither know nor do I much care: but to the works 
themselves, '' worthy of all acceptation," and to the feelings 
they have always excited in me since I could distinguish 
a meaning in language, nothing shall ever prevent me 
from looking back with gratitude and triumph. To have 
lived in the cultivation of an intimacy with such works, and 
to have famiharly relished such names, is not to have lived 
quite in vain. 

There are other authors whom I have never read, and 
yet whom I have frequently had a great desire to read, 
from some circumstance relating to them. Among these is 
Lord Clarendon's History of the Grand Rebellion, after 
which I have a hankering, from hearing it spoken of by 
good judges — from my interest in the events, and knowl- 
edge of the characters from other sources, and from having 
seen fine portraits of most of them. I like to read a well- 
penned character, and Clarendon is said to have been a 
master in this way. I should like to read Froissart's 
Chronicles, Hollinshed and Stowe, and Fuller's Worthies. 
I intend, whenever I can, to read Beaumont and Fletcher 
all through. There are fifty-two of their plays, and I have 
only read a dozen or fourteen of them. A Wife for a 
Month, and Thierry and Theodoret, are, I am told, de- 
licious, and I can believe it. I should like to read the 
speeches in Thucydides, and Guicciardini's History of 



On Reading Old Books 347 

Florence, and Don Quixote in the original. I have often 
thought of reading the Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, 
and the Galatea of the same author. But I somehow re- 
serve them like " another Yarrow." I should also like to 
read the last new novel (if I could be sure it was so) of 
the author of Waverley : — no one would be more glad than 
I to find it the best !— 



NOTES 

[The annotations have not necessarily been introduced at the first 
occurrence of any name, and no cross-references have been sup- 
pHed in the notes to names which occur in the text more than once. 
Such information as the notes supply can be found with the help of 
the index. — References, where no other indication is given, will be 
understood to be to the work under discussion. The Shakespeare 
references are to the one-volume Globe edition.] 



THE AGE OF ELIZABETH 

This lecture forms the introduction to the series on the " Litera- 
ture of the Age of Elizabeth." Hazlitt might have derived hints for it 
from Schlegel, who speaks of the zeal for the study of the ancients, 
the extensive communication with other lands, the interest in the 
Hterature of Italy and Spain, the progress in experimental philosophy 
represented by Bacon, and contrasts the achievements of that age, 
in a vein which must have captured Hazlitt's sympathy, with 
" the pretensions of modern enlightenment, as it is called, which 
looks with such contempt on all preceding ages." The Elizabethans, 
he goes on to say, " possessed a fullness of healthy vigour, which 
showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with petu- 
lance. The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen, 
who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her 
throne, and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, 
was in fact, well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with 
an ardent enthusiasm, inflamed that spirit to the noblest love of 
glory and renown. The feudal independence also still survived in 
some measure ; the nobility vied with each other in the splendour 
of dress and number of retinue, and every great lord had a sort of 
small court of his own. The distinction of ranks was as yet strongly 
marked : a state of things ardently to be desired by the dramatic 
poet." " Lectures on Dramatic Literature," ed. Bohn, p. 349. 

349 



350 Notes 

P. ,1. Raleigh, Sir Walter (i 552-1618), the celebrated courtier, 
explorer, and man of letters. 

Drake, Sir Francis (i545-i595), the famous sailor, hero of the 
Armada. 

Coke, Sir Edward (1552-1634), the great jurist, whose "Insti- 
tutes," better known as Coke upon Littleton, became a famous legal 
text-book. 

Hooker, Richard (i5S3-i6oo), theologian, author of the "Laws of 
Ecclesiastical Polity" (1593), a defense of the AngHcan Church 
against the Puritans and notable also as a masterpiece of English 
prose. 

P. 2. mere oblivion. " As You Like It," ii, 7, 165. 

poor, poor dumb names [mouths]. " Juhus Caesar," iii, 2, 229. 

Marston, John (i575-i634)- In the third lecture on the "Age of 
Elizabeth," Hazlitt calls him " a writer of great merit, who rose to 
tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sym- 
pathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient 
scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and foHies of men, 
which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He 
was properly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contempo- 
raries, nor they with him." Works, V, 224. His chief tragedy is 
" Antonio and Mellida." 

Middleton, Thomas (i57o?-i627), and Rowley, William (1585?- 
1642?). In the second lecture on the " Age of Elizabeth," Hazlitt as- 
sociates these two names. " Rowley appears to have excelled in 
describing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and disinterested 
tone of morality, carried almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his 
Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman Never Vexed, which 
is written, in many parts, with a pleasing simplicity and naivete 
equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton's style was not 
marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal 
proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contempo- 
raries. . . . He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement 
of the story. It is like the rough draft of a tragedy with a number 
of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first; but it tends 
to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increasing, as 
we read on, for want of previous arrangement and an eye to the 
whole. . . . The author's power is in the subject, not over it; or he 
is in possession of excellent materials which he husbands very ill." 
Works, V, 214-5. For characters of other dramatists see notes to p. 
326. 



Notes 351 

How lov'd. Pope's " Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate 
Lady." 

P. 3. draw the curtain of time. Cf. " we will draw the curtain 
and show you the picture." " Twelfth Night," i, 5, 251. 

within reasonable hounds. At this point Hazlitt digresses to re- 
prove the age for its affectation of superiority over other ages and 
the passage, not being relevant, has been omitted. 

less than smallest dwarfs. " Paradise Lost," I, 779. 

4esiring this man's art. Shakespeare's Sonnets, XXIX. 

in shape and gesture. " Paradise Lost," I, 590. 

Mr. Wordsworth says. See Sonnet entitled " London, 1802." 

P. 4. drew after him. " Paradise Lost," II, 692. 

Otway, Thomas (1652-1685), author of "Venice Preserved," the 
most popular post-Shakespearian tragedy of the English stage. Haz- 
litt notes in this play a " power of rivetting breathless attention, and 
stirring the deepest yearnings of affection. . . . The awful sus- 
pense of the situations, the conflict of duties and passions, the in- 
timate bonds that unite the characters together, and that are violently 
rent asunder like the parting of soul and body, the solemn march 
of the tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that winds up and 
closes over all, give to this production of Otway's Muse a charm 
and power that bind it like a spell on the public mind, and have made 
it a proud and inseparable adjunct of the English stage." Works, V, 
354-5- 

Jonson's learned sock. Milton's " L'AUegro." 

P. 6. The translation of the Bible. The first important i6th cen- 
tury translation of the Bible is William Tyndale's version of the 
New Testament (1525) and of the Pentateuch (1530). The complete 
translations are those of Miles Coverdale (1535), the Great Bible 
(i539)» the Geneva or Breeches Bible (1557), the Bishop's Bible 
(1568), and the Rheims-Douay Bible — the New Testament (1582) 
and the Old Testament (1609-1610). Finally came the Authorized 
Version in 161 1. 

P. 8. penetrable stuff. " Hamlet," iii, 4, 36. 
Khis washing, etc. St. John, xiii. 

above all art, etc. Cf. Pope's "Epistle to the Earl of Oxford": 
"Above all Pain, all Passion, and all Pride." 

My peace. St. John, xiv, 27. 

they should love. Ibid., xv, 12. 

Woman, behold. Ibid., xix, 26. 

his treatment of the woman. Ibid., viii, 1-12. 



352 Notes 

the woman who poured precious ointment. St. Matthew, xxvi, 6- 
13; St. Mark, xiv, 3-9. 

his discourse with the disciples. St. Luke, xxiv, 13-31. 

his Sermon on the Mount. St. Matthew, v-vii. 

parable of the Good Samaritan and of the Prodigal Son. St. Luke, 
X, 25-37; XV, 11-32. 

P. 9. Who is our neighbour. Ibid., x, 29. 

to the Jews, etc. I Corinthians, i, 2;^. 

P. 10. Soft as sinews. " Hamlet," iii, 3, 71. 

The best of men. Dekker, " The Honest Whore," Part I, v, 2, 
sub fin. 

P. II. Tasso by Fairfax. Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), an Italian 
poet whose great epic, the " Gerusalemme Liberata," was finished in 
1574. The English translation by Edward Fairfax was published in 
1600 as " Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Jerusalem." 

Ariosto by Harrington. Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533), whose ro- 
mantic epic, " Orlando Furioso," was first published in 1516, and 
translated by Sir John Harrington in 1591. 

Homer and Hesiod by Chapman. George Chapman (i559?-i634), 
poet and dramatist, published a complete translation of the " Iliad " 
in 1611, of the " Odyssey " in 1614, of Homer's " Battle of Frogs and 
Mice " in 1624, and of " The Georgicks of Hesiod " in 1618. 

Virgil. A complete English translation of the " ^neid " was made 
by Gavin Douglas, a Scottish poet (i474?-i522), and first printed 
in London in 1553. There was a translation of the second and fourth 
books into blank verse by the Earl of Surrey, published in 1557, but 
the one most in use was by Thomas Phaer (i5io?-i56o), which ap- 
peared incompletely in 1558 and 1562 and was completed by Thomas 
Twyne in 1583. 

Ovid. There were a number of translators of Ovid during this 
period, chief of whom was Arthur Golding, whose version of the 
" Metamorphoses " appeared in 1565 and 1567. " The Heroides " were 
translated by George Turberville in 1567. 

Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch. The chief work of 
Plutarch, a Greek writer of the first century, is the " Parallel Lives," 
which was translated into French by Jacques Amyot in 1559. Sir 
Thomas North's translation of Amyot's version in 1579 was the most 
popular and influential of all Elizabethan translations. 

P. 12. Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313-1375), Italian poet and novelist. 
Among the English his best known work is the " Decameron," a col- 
lection of a hundred prose tales. Versions of some of these stories 



Notes 353 

appeared in various Elizabethan collections, such as the " Tragical 
Tales " translated by George Turberville in 1587. The first complete 
translation was published in 1620 and reprinted in the Tudor 
Translations in 1909. 

Petrarch (1304-1374), Italian humanist and poet, whose sonnets 
were widely imitated by French and Italian poets during the Renais- 
sance. 

Dante (1265-1321). The author of the " Divine Comedy" was not 
very well known to Elizabethan readers. There was no English 
translation of his poem attempted till that of Rogers in 1782, and 
no version worthy of the name was produced till H. F. Gary's in 
1814. 

Aretine. The name of Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), an Itahan 
satirist who called himself " the scourge of princes," was well known 
in England, but there was no translation of his works. 

Machiavel. Nicolo Machiavelli (1468-1527), a Florentine states- 
man, whose name had an odious association because of the supposedly 
diabolical policy of government set forth in his " Prince." But this 
work was not translated till 1640. His "Art of War" had been 
rendered into English in 1560 and his " Florentine History " in 1595. 

Castiglione, Baldassare (1478-1529). "II Gortegiano," setting 
forth the idea of a gentleman, was translated as " The Gourtier " by 
Thomas Hoby in 1561 and was very influential in English life. 

Ronsard, Pierre de (1524-1585), the chief French lyric poet of the 
sixteenth century, whose sonnets had considerable vogue in England. 

Du Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste (1544-1590), author of "La Se- 
maine, ou la Greation du Monde" (1578), "La Seconde Semaine " 
(1584), translated as the "Divine Weeks and Works" (1592 flf.) by 
Joshua Sylvester. 

P. 13. Fortunate fields. " Paradise Lost," III, 568. 

Prospero's Enchanted Island. Eden's " History of Travayk," 
1577, is now given as the probable source of Setebos, etc. 

Right well I wote. " Faerie Queene," II, Introduction, 1-3. 

P. 14. Lear is founded. Shakespeare's actual sources were prob- 
ably Geoffrey of Monmouth's " History of the Kings of Britain " (c. 
1 130) and Holinshed's " Ghronicle." 

Othello on an Italian novel, from the " Hecatommithi " of Giraldi 
Ginthio (1565)- 

Hamlet on a Danish, Macbeth on a Scottish tradition. The story 
of Hamlet is first found in Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish chronicler 
of the tenth century. Shakespeare probably drew it from the " His- 



354 Notes 

toires Tragiques" of Belleforest. "Macbeth" was based on Holin- 
shed's " Chronicle of Scottish History." 

P. 15. those bodiless creations. " Hamlet," iii, 4, 138. 

Your face. " Macbeth," i, 5, 63. 

Tyrrell and Forrest, persons hired by Richard HI to murder the 
young princes in the Tower. See " Richard HI," iv, 2-3. 

thick and slab. " Macbeth," iv, i, 32. 

snatched a [wild and] fearful joy. Gray's " Ode on a Distant 
Prospect of Eton College." 

P. 16. Fletcher the poet. John Fletcher the dramatist died of the 
plague in 1625. 

The course of true love. " Midsummer Night's Dream," i, i, 34. 

The age of chivalry was not then quite gone. Cf. Burke: "Re- 
flections on the French Revolution" (ed. Bohn, H, 348) : "But the 
age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and cal- 
culators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished 
forever." 

fell a martyr. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), poet, soldier, and 
statesman, received his mortal 'wound in the thigh at the battle of 
Zutphen because, in emulation of Sir William Pelham, he threw off 
his greaves before entering -the fight. 

the gentle Surrey. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (i5i8?-i547), 
was distinguished as an innovator in English poetry as well as for his 
knightly prowess. 

who prised black eyes. " Sessions of the Poets," verse 20. 

Like strength reposing. " 'Tis might half slumb'ring on its own 
right arm." Keats's " Sleep and Poetry," 237. 

P. 17. they heard the tumult, " I behold the tumult and am still." 
Cowper's " Task," IV, 99. 

descriptions of hunting and other athletic games. See "Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream," iv, i, 107 ff., and " Two Noble Kinsmen," iii. 

An ingenious and agreeable writer. Nathan Drake (1766-1836), 
author of "Shakespeare and his Times" (1817). In describing the 
life of the country squire Drake remarks : " The luxury of eating 
and of good cooking were well understood in the days of Elizabeth, 
and the table of the country-squire frequently groaned beneath the 
burden of its dishes ; at Christmas and at Easter especially, the hall 
became the scene of great festivity." Chap. V. (ed. 1838, p. S7)- 

Return from Parnassus. Hazlitt gives an account of this play in 
the " Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," Lecture V. 

P. 18. it snowed. " Canterbury Tales," Prologue, 345. 



Notes 355 

as Mr. Lamh observes, in a note to Marston's " What You Will " 
in the "Specimens of Dramatic Literature" (ed. Lucas, I, 44): 
" The blank uniformity to which all professional distinctions in ap- 
parel have been long hastening, is one instance of the decay of 
Symbols among us, which, whether it has contributed or not to make 
us a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative 
people." Cf. Schlegel's remark in the first note. 

in act. " Othello," i, i, 62. 

description of a mad-house. " Honest Whore," Part i, v, 2. 

A Mad World, My Masters, the title of a comedy by Middleton. 

P. 19. Music and painting are not our forte. Cf. Hazlitt's review 
of the " Life of Reynolds " (X, 186-87) • "Were our ancestors insen- 
sible to the charms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of 
virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them in their mind's 
eye : they felt them at their heart's core, and there only. They did 
not translate their perceptions into the language of sense: they did 
not embody them in visible images, but in breathing words. They 
were more taken up with what an object suggested to combine with 
the infinite stores of fancy or trains of feeling, than with the single 
object itself; more intent upon the moral inference, the tendency and 
the result, than the appearance of things, however imposing or ex- 
pressive, at any given moment of time. . . . We should say that 
the eye in w-armer climates drinks in greater pleasure from external 
sights, is more open and porous to them, as the ear is to sounds; 
that the sense of immediate delight is fixed deeper in the beauty 
of the object; that the greater life and animation of character gives 
a greater spirit and intensity of expression to the face, making 
finer subjects for history and portrait; and that the circumstances 
in which a people are placed in a genial atmosphere, are more favour- 
able to the study of nature and of the human form." 

like birdlime. " Othello," ii, i, 126. 

P. 20. Materiam superabat opus. Ovid's " Metamorplioses," II, 5. 

Pan is a God. Lyly's " Midas," iv, i. 



SPENSER 

This is the latter half of the lecture on Chaucer and Spenser from 
the " English Poets." 

P. 21. Spenser Nourished, etc. Edmund Spenser (i552?-i599), 
served as secretary to Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland in 1577, and went 



356 Notes 

again in 1580 as secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, the Queen's new 
deputy to Ireland. He was driven out by a revolt of the Irish in 
1598. " A View of the State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise be- 
tween Eudoxus and Irenaeus ... in 1596" was first printed in 

1633- 

description of the bog of Allan. " Faerie Queene," II, ix, 16. 

Treatment he received from Burleigh. Hazlitt refers to this 
treatment specifically in the essay " On Respectable People " (XI, 
435) : " Spenser, kept waiting for the hundred pounds which Burleigh 
grudged him ' for a song,' might feel the mortification of his situa- 
tion ; but the statesman never felt any diminution of his sovereign's 
favour in consequence of it." The facts, as they are recorded in 
the " Dictionary of National Biography," are as follows : " The queen 
gave proof of her appreciation by bestowing a pension on the poet. 
According to an anecdote, partly reported by Manningham, the 
diarist (Diary, p. 43), and told at length by Fuller, Lord Burgh- 
ley, in his capacity of treasurer, protested against the largeness of 
the sum which the queen suggested, and was directed by her to give 
the poet what was reasonable. He received the formal grant of £50 a 
year in February 1590-1." Cf. Spenser's lines in " Mother Hubbard's 
Tale," 895 ff. 

Though much later than Chaucer. The rest of this paragraph and 
most of the points elaborated in this lecture appeared in Hazlitt's 
review of Sismondi's "Literature of the South" in 1815 (X, ys ff-)- 

Spenser's poetry is all fairyland. In a lecture delivered in Feb- 
ruary, 1818, three years after Hazlitt's remarks had appeared in the 
Edinburgh Review, Coleridge spoke as follows : " You will take 
especial note of the marvellous independence and true imaginative 
absence of all particular space or time in the Faery Queene. It is in 
the domains neither of history or geography ; it is ignorant of all 
artificial boundary, all material obstacles ; it is truly in the land of 
Faery, that is, of mental space. The poet has placed you in a dream, 
a charmed sleep, and you neither wish, nor have the power, to in- 
quire where you are, or how you got there." Works, IV, 250. 

P. 22. clap on high. " Faerie Queene," III, xii, 23. 

In green vine leaves. I, iv, 22. 

Upon the top. I, vii, 32. 

P. 23. In reading the Faerie Queene, etc. See HI, ix, 10; I, vii; 
II, vi, 5; HI, xii. 

and mask. " L' Allegro." 

And more to lull. I, i, 41. 



Notes 357 

honey-heavy dew of slumber. "Julius Caesar," ii, i, 230. 

Eftsoons they heard. II, xii, 70. 

P. 25. House of Pride. I, iv, 4. 

Cave of Mammon. II, vii, 28. 

Cave of Despair. I, ix, 33. 

the account of Memory. II, ix, 54. 

description of Belphoche. II, iii, 21. 

story of Florimel. Ill, vii, 12. 

Gardens of Adonis. Ill, vi, 29. 

Bower of Bliss. II, xii, 42. 

Mask of Cupid. Ill, xii. 

Colin Clout's Vision. VI, x, 10-27. 

P. 26. Poussin, Nicolas (1594-1665), French painter. See Hazlitt's 
delightful essay in " Table Talk " " On a Landscape by Nicholas 
Poussin." 

And eke. Ill, ix, 20. 

the cold icicles. Ill, viii, 35. 

That was Arion. IV, xi, 23-24. 

Procession of the Passions. I, iv, 16 ff. 

P. 28. Yet not more sweet. Southey's " Carmen Nuptiale : Lay of 
the Laureate." In the " Character of Milton's Eve " in the " Round 
Table," Hazlitt remarks that Spenser " has an eye to the conse- 
quences, and steeps everything in pleasure, often not of the purest 
kind." 

P. 30. Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640), Flemish painter. See the 
paper on " The Pictures at Oxford and Blenheim " (Works, IX, 
71) : "Rubens was the only artist that could have embodied some 
of our countryman Spenser's splendid and voluptuous allegories. 
If a painter among ourselves were to attempt a Spenser Gallery, 
(perhaps the finest subject for the pencil in the world after Heathen 
mythology and Scripture history), he ought to go and study the 
principles of his design at Blenheim." 

the account of Satyrane. I, vi, 24. 

by the help. Ill, x, 47. 

the change of Malbecco. Ill, x, 56-60. 

P. 31, n. That all with one consent. " Troilus and Cressida," iii, 
3, 176. 

P. 32. High over hills. Ill, x, 55. 

Pope who used to ask. Pope is also quoted in Spence's " Anec- 
dotes " (Section viii, 1743-4) as saying that "there is something in 
Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age, as it did in 



358 Notes 

one's youth. I read the ' Faerie Qucene,' when I was about twelve, 
with infinite dehght, and I think it gave me as much, when I read 
it over about a year or two ago." Waller-Glover. 

the account of Talus. V, i, 12. 

episode of Pastorella. VI, ix, 12. 

P. ZZ- "^ many a winding bout. " L' Allegro." 

SHAKSPEARE 

This selection is from the " Lectures on the English Poets." At the 
beginning of his lecture on Shakespeare and Milton, Hazlitt main- 
tains that the arts reach their perfection in the early periods and are 
not continually progressive like the sciences — an idea which he fre- 
quently comes back to in his writings, notably in the " Round Table " 
paper, " Why the Arts are not Progressive." 

P. 34. the fault, etc. Cf. " Julius Caesar," i, 2, 140. 

Shakspeare as they would be. Hazlitt may have had in mind Dr. 
Johnson's comment in his preface to Shakespeare's works : " the 
event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, 
its effect would probably be such as he had assigned ; he has not only 
shewn human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be 
found in trials to which it cannot be exposed." (Nichol Smith: 
"Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 117.) 

P. 35. its generic quality. Coleridge applied the epithet " myriad- 
minded " to Shakespeare. See also Schlegel's " Lectures on the 
Drama," ed. Bohn, p. 363 : " Never perhaps was there so compre- 
hensive a talent for characterization as Shakespeare. It not only 
grasps the diversity of rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of 
infancy ; not only do the king and the beggar, th« hero and the pick- 
pocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness 
. . . his human characters have not only such depth and indi- 
viduality that they do not admit of being classed under common 
names, and are inexhaustible even in conception ; no, this Prometheus 
not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of 
spirits, calls up the .midnight ghost, exhibits before us the witches 
with their unhallowed rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies and 
sylphs ; and these beings, though existing only in the imagination, 
nevertheless possess such truth and consistency, that even with 
such misshapen abortions as CaHban, he extorts the assenting con- 
viction, that were there such beings they would so conduct them- 
selves. In a word, as he carries a bold and pregnant fancy into the 



Notes 359 

kingdom of nature, on the other hand, he carries nature into the 
region of fancy, which lies beyond the confines of reality. We are 
lost in astonishment at the close intimacy he brings us into with the 
extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard-of." 

a mind reflecting ages past. " These words occur in the first 
lines of a laudatory poem on Shakespeare printed in the second 
folio (1632). The poem is signed 'J. M. S.' and was attributed by 
Coleridge to ' John Milton, Student.' See his ' Lectures on Shake- 
speare ' (ed. T. Ashe), pp. 129-130." Waller-Glover, IV, 411. 

P. 36. All corners, etc. " Cymbeline," iii, 4, 39. 

nodded to him. " Midsummer Night's Dream," iii, i, 177. 

his so potent art. " Tempest," v, i, 50. 

IVhe)! he conceived of a character, etc. Cf. Maurice Morgann, 
" On the Character of Falstaff " : " But it was not enough for 
Shakespeare to have formed his characters with the most perfect 
truth and coherence ; it was further necessary that he should possess 
a wonderful facility of compressing, as it were, his own spirit 
into these images, and of giving alternate animation to the forms. 
This was not to be done from without; he must have felt every 
varied situation, and have spoken thro' the organ he had formed. 
Such an intuitive comprehension of things and such a facility must 
unite to produce a Shakespeare." (Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth 
Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 247, n.) 

subject to the same skyey influences. Cf. " Measure for Measure," 
iii, I, 9: " servile to all the skyey influences." 

his frequent haunts. Cf. " Comus," 314: "my daily walks and 
ancient neighborhood." 

P. 37. coheres semblably together. Cf. 2 "Henry IV," v, i, 72: 
" to see the semblable coherence." 

It has been ingeniously remarked, by Coleridge, " Seven Lectures 
on Shakespeare and Milton," p. 116: "The power of poetry is, by 
a single word perhaps, to instil that energy into the mind, which 
compels the imagination to produce the picture. . . . Here, by in- 
troducing a single happy epithet, ' crying,' a complete picture is 
presented to the mind, and in the production of such pictures the 
power of genius consists." 

me and thy crying self. " Tempest," i, 2, 132. 

What! man. "Macbeth," iv, 3, 208. 

Rosencrans. The early editions consistently misspell this name 
Rosencraus. 

Man delights not me. " Hamlet," ii, 2, 321. 



360 ' Notes 

a combination and a form. " Hamlet," iii, 4, 60. 

P. 39. There is a willow, etc. See " Hamlet," iv, 7, 167: 
" There is a willow grows aslant a brook 
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." 

Now this is an instance, etc. Hazlitt elsewhere ascribes this ob- 
servation to Lamb. See p. 83, n. 

He's speaking now. " Antony and Cleopatra," i, 5, 24. 

It is my birthday. Ibid., iii, 13, 185. 

P. 41. nigh sphered in heaven. Collins's " Ode on the Poetical 
Character." 

to make society. " Macbeth," iii, i, 42. 

P. 42. with a little act. " Othello," iii, 3, 328. 

P. 43. while rage. " Troilus and Cressida," i, 3, 52. 

in their untroubled elements, etc. Cf. Wordsworth's "Excursion," 
VI, 763-766: 

" That glorious star 
In its untroubled element will shine 
As now it shines, when we are laid in earth 
And safe from all our sorrows." 

Satan's address to the sun. " Paradise Lost," IV, 31. 

Oh that I were. " Richard II," iv, i, 260. 

P. 44. His form. " Paradise Lost," I, 591-594. 

P. 45. With what measure. Mark, iv, 24; Luke, vi, 38. 

h glances. " Midsummer Night's Dream," v, i, 13. 

puts a girdle. Ibid., ii, i, 175. 

/ ask. " Troilus and Cressida," i, 3, 227. 

No man. Ibid., iii, 3, 15. 

P. 46. Rouse yourself. Ibid., iii, 3, 222. 

In Shakspeare, any other word, etc. In the essay " On Application 
to Study," in the " Plain Speaker," Hazlitt gives further illustrations 
of this point. 

P. 47. Light thickens. " Macbeth," iii, 2, 50. 

the business of the state. " Othello," iv, 2, 166. 

Of ditties highly penned. 1 " Henry IV," iii, 1, 209, 

And so. "Two Gentlemen of Verona," ii, 7, 31. 

The universality of his genius, etc. Cf . " On Gusto," " Round 
Table " : " The infinite quahty of dramatic invention in Shakspeare 
takes from his gusto. The power he dehghts to show is not intense, 
but discursive. He never insists on anything as much as he might, 
except a quibble." 

P. 48. He wrote for the great vulgar, etc. The same remark had 



Notes 361 

been made by both Pope and Johnson. See Nichol Smith's " Eight- 
eenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," pp. 49 and 141. 

the great vulgar and the small. Cowley's " Translation of Horace's 
Ode III, i." 

his delights. " Antony and Cleopatra," v, 2, 88. 

P. 49. His tragedies are better than his comedies. Hazlitt is here 
deliberately opposing the view of. Dr. Johnson expressed in the lat- 
ter's preface to Shakespeare: " In tragedy he often writes with great 
appearance of toil and study, what is written at last with little 
felicity ; but in his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour, 
what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling 
after some occasion to be comick, but in comedy he seems to repose, 
or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In 
his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy 
often surpasses expectation or desire." (Nichol Smith's " Eighteenth 
Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 121.) In the second lecture of 
the " English Comic Writers," Hazlitt recurs to this opinion of 
Johnson's with the following comment : " For my own part, I so far 
consider this preference given to the comic genius of the poet as 
erroneous and unfounded, that I should say that he is the only 
tragic poet in~ the world in the highest sense, as being on a par 
with, and the same as Nature, in her greatest heights and depths 
of action and suffering. There is but one who durst walk within 
that mighty circle, treading the utmost bound of nature and passion, 
showing us the dread abyss of woe in all its ghastly shapes and 
colours, and laying open all the faculties of the human soul to act, 
to think, and suffer, in direst extremities ; whereas I think, on 
the other hand, that in comedy, though his talents there too were as 
wonderful as they were delightful, yet that there were some before 
him, others on a level with him, and many close behind him. . . . 
There is not only nothing so good (in my judgment) as Hamlet, 
or Lear, or Othello, or Macbeth, but there is nothing like Hamlet, 
or Lear, or Othello, or Macbeth. There is nothing, I believe, in the 
majestic Corneille, equal to the stern pride of Coriolanus, or which 
gives such an idea of the crumbling in pieces of the Roman grandeur, 
' like an unsubstantial pageant faded,' as the Antony and Cleopatra. 
But to match the best serious comedies, such as Moliere's Misan- 
thrope and his Tartuffe, we must go to Shakspeare's tragic charac- 
ters, the Timon of Athens or honest lago, where we shall more than 
succeed. He put his strength into his tragedies and played with 
comedy. He was greatest in what was greatest; and his forte 



362 Notes 

was not trifling, according to the opinion here combated, even 

though he might dp that as well as any one else, unless he could 

do it better than anybody else." See also p. 99. 



CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS 

CYMBELINE 

P. 51. Dr. Johnson is of opinion. "It may be observed that in 
many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he 
found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, 
Jie shortened the labour to snatch the profit. He therefore remits 
his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his 
catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented." 
(Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 
123- ) 

It is the peculiar excellence, etc. Cf. Coleridge's Works, IV, 75- 
76 : " In Shakespeare all the elements of womanhood are holy, and 
there is the sweet, yet digjiified feeling of all that continuates 
society, a sense of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable 
by sophistry, because it rests not in the analytic process, but in that 
sane equipoise of the faculties, during which the feehngs are repre- 
sentative of all past experience, — not of the individual only, but of all 
those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors even 
up to the first mother that lived. Shakespeare saw that the want 
of prominence which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed 
beauty of the woman's character, and knew that it arose not from 
any deficiency, but from the exquisite harmony of all the parts of 
the moral being constituting one living total of head and heart. 
He has drawn it indeed in all its distinctive energies of faith, pa- 
tience, constancy, fortitude, — shown in all of them as following the 
heart, which gives its results by a nice tact and happy intuition, with- 
out the intervention of the discursive faculty, sees all things in and 
by the light of the affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggera- 
tions of love alone." 

P. 52. Cihber, in speaking. See " Apology for the Life of Mr. 
Colley Cibber" (1740), I, iv. 

My lord, i, 6, 112. 

P. 53- What cheer, iii, 4, 41. The six quotations following are 
in the same scene. 



Notes 363 

P. 54. My dear lord, iii, 6, 14. 

And when with wild zvood-l eaves, iv, 2, 389, 

P. 55. With fairest Uowers. iv, 2, 218, 

Cytherea, how bravely, ii, 2, 14. 

Me of my lawful pleasure, ii, 5, 9. 

P. 56. whose love-suit, iii, 4, 136. 

^/^^ ancient critic. Aristophanes of Byzantium, who lived in the 
third century before the Christian era. 

the principle of analogy. This point is enforced by Hazhtt in con- 
nection with " Lear," " The Tempest," " Midsummer Night's Dream," 
and " As You Like It." Coleridge had previously remarked, " A 
unity of feeling and character pervades every drama of Shake- 
speare" (Works IV, 61), and Schlegel had written in the same man- 
ner concerning " Romeo and Juliet " : " The sweetest and the bitter- 
est love and hatred, festive rejoicings and dark forebodings, tender 
embraces and sepulchral horrors, the fulness of life and self- 
annihilation, are here all brought close to each other ; and yet these 
contrasts are so blended into a unity of impression, that the echo 
which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single but 
endless sigh." (ed. Bohn, p. 401). 

P. 57. Out af your proof, iii, 3, 27. 

P. 58. The game's afoot. " The game is up," iii, 3, 107. 

Under the shade. "As You Like It," ii, 7, iii. 

P. 59. See, boys. " Stoop, boys," iii, 3, 2. 

Nay, Cadwell. iv, 2, 255. 

Stick to your journal course, iv, 2, 10. 

Your highness, i, 5, 23. 



MACBETH 

P. 60. The poet's eye. " Midsummer Night's Dream," v, i, 12. 
your only tragedy-maker. An adaptation of "your only jig- 
maker," " Hamlet," iii, 2, 132. 

the air smells wooingly, the temple-haunting martlet, i, 6, 4-6. 

blasted heath, i, 3, yj. 

air-drawn dagger, iii, 4, 62. 

the gracious Duncan, iii, i, 66. 

P. 61. blood-boultered Banquo. iv, i, 123. 

What are these, i, 3, 39. 

bends up. i, 7, 80. 



364 Notes 

P. 62. The deed. Cf. ii, 2, 11 : " The attempt and not the deed 
confounds us." 

preter[super]natural solicitings. i, 3, 130. 

Bring forth, i, 7, y^. 

P. 63. Screw his courage, i, 7, 60. 

lost so poorly. Cf. ii, 2, 71 : " Be not lost so poorly in your 
thoughts." 

a little water, ii, 2, 68. 

the sides of his intent, i, 7, 26. 

/or ^/t^/r future days and nights. Cf. i, 5, 70: "To all our days 
and nights to come." The next five quotations are from the same 
scene. 

P. 64. Mrs. Siddons. Sarah Siddons (1775-1831), "The Tragic 
Muse," the most celebrated actress in the history of the English 
stage. Hazlitt wrote this passage for the Examiner (June 16, 1816) 
immediately after seeing a performance of the part by Mrs. Siddons. 
See Works, VIII, 312-373. 

P. 65. There is no art. i, 4, 11. 

How goes the night, ii, i, i. 

P. 66. Light thickens, iii, 2, 50. 

Now spurs, iii, 3, 6. 

P. 67. So fair and foul a day. i, 3, 38. 

such welcome and unwelcome news together. Cf. iv, 3, 138: 
" such welcome and unwelcome things at once." 

Men's lives are. Cf. iv, 3. 171 : 

" and good men's lives 
Expire before the flowers in their caps, 
Dying or ere they sicken." 

Look like the innocent 'flower, i, 5, 66. 

to him and all, " to all and him." iii, 4, 91. 

Avaunt and quit my sight, iii, 4, 93. 

himself again. Cf. iii, 4, 107: "being gone, I am a man again." 

he may sleep, iv, i, 86. 

Then he thou jocund, iii, 2, 40. 

Had he not resembled, ii, 2, 13. 

should he women, i, 3, 45. 

in deeper consequence, i, 3, 126. 

Why stands, iv, i, 125. 

P. 68. He is as distinct a heing, etc. Cf. Pope (Nichol Smith's 
" Eighteenth Century Essays," p. 48) : " Every single character in 
Shakespeare is as much an individual as those in Hfe itself; it is 



Notes 365 

impossible to find any two alike ; and such as from their relation or 
affinity appear most to be twins, will upon comparison be found re- 
markably distinct." Beattie also had commented on " that wonder- 
fully penetrating and plastic faculty, which is capable of repre- 
senting every species of character, not as our ordinary poets do, by 
a high shoulder, a wry mouth, or gigantic stature, but by hitting off, 
with a delicate hand, the distinguishing feature, and that in such 
a manner as makes it easily known from all others whatsoever, how- 
ever similar to a superficial eye." (Quoted in Drake's " Memorials 
of Shakespeare," 1828, p. 255.) Richard Cumberland had developed 
a parallel between Macbeth and Richard III in the Observer, 
Nos. 55-58, but it is to the suggestion of Thomas Whateley that 
Hazlitt is chiefly indebted. Both Richard III and Macbeth, says 
Whateley, " are soldiers, both usurpers ; both attain the throne by 
the same means, by treason and murder ; and both lose it too in the 
same manner, in battle against the person claiming it as lawful heir. 
Perfidy, violence, and tyranny are common to both ; and these 
only, their obvious qualities, would have been attributed indis- 
criminately to both by an ordinary dramatic writer. But Shake- 
speare, in conformity to the truth of history as far as it led him, and 
by improving upon the fables which have been blended with it, 
has ascribed opposite principles and motives to the same designs 
and actions, and various effects to the operation of the same events 
upon different tempers. Richard and Macbeth, as represented by 
him, agree in nothing but their fortunes." (See the Variorum edi- 
tion of "Richard III," p. 549.) HazHtt makes similar discrimina- 
tions between the characters of lago and Richard III, between 
Henry VI and Richard II, and between Ariel and Puck. 

the milk of human kindness, i, 5, 18. 

himself alone. Cf. 3 " Henry VI," v, 6, 83 : "I am myself alone." 

P. 69. For Banquo's issue, iii, i, 65. 

Duncan is in his grave, iii, 2, 22. 

direness is rendered familiar, v, 5, 14. 

troubled with thick coming fancies, v, 3, 38. 

P. 70. subject to all. " Measure for Measure," iii, i, 9. 

My way of life, v, 3, 22. 

P. 71. Lillo, George (1693-1739),, author of several "bourgeois" 
^■ragedies of which the best known is "George Barnwell" (1731). 

Specimens of Early English Dramatic Poets by Charles Lamb, 
1808. (Works, ed. Lucas, IV, 144.) 



366 Notes 

lAGO 

P. "/Z- What a full fortune and Here is her father's house, i, 
I, 66-74. 

P. 74. / cannot believe, n, i, 254. 

And yet how nature, iii, 3, 227. 

milk of human kindness. " Macbeth," i, 5, 18. 

relish of salvation. " Hamlet," iii, 3, 92. 

Oh, you are well tuned, ii, i, 202. 

P. 75. My noble lord, iii, 3, 92. 

O grace, iii, 3, ZJZ- 

P. 76. //ow zj it. iv, I, 60. 

Zanga, in the "Revenge" (1721), a tragedy by Edward Young 
(1683-1765). 

HAMLET 

P. 76. This goodly frame and Man delighted not. ii, 2, 310-321. 

P. 77. too much i' th' sun. i, 2, 67. 

the pangs, iii, i, 72. 

P. 78. There is no attempt to force an interest. Professor Saints- 
bury ("History of Criticism," HI, 258) calls this utterance an 
apex of Shakespearian criticism. Hazlitt makes a similar comment 
in the character of " Troilus and Cressida " : " He has no prejudice 
for or against his characters : he saw both sides of a question ; at 
once an actor and a spectator in the scene." Dr. Johnson had ob- 
served this attitude in Shakespeare, but he had seen in it a viola- 
tion of the demands of poetic justice: "he carries his persons 
indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses 
them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate 
by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; 
for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice 
is a virtue independent on time or place." (Nichol Smith's " Eight- 
eenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 123.) 

outward pageant. Cf. i, 2, 86: "the trappings and the suits of 
woe." 

we have that within, i, 2, 85. 

P. 79. He kneels. Cf. iii, 3, 72, : " Now might I do it pat, now he 
is praying." 

P. 80. How all occasions, iv, 4, 32. 

P. 81. that noble and liberal casuist. Doubtless suggested by 



Notes 367 

Lamb's description o£ the old English dramatists as "those noble 
and liberal casuists." (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 46.) 

The Whole Duty of Man, a popular treatise of morals (1659). 

Academy of Compliments, or the Whole Duty of Courtship, being 
the nearest or most exact way of wooing a Maid or Widow, by 
the way of Dialogue or Complimental Expressions (1655, 1669). 

The neglect of punctilious exactness, etc. The entire passage fol- 
lows pretty closely the interpretation of Lamb : " Among the dis- 
tinguishing features of that wonderful character, one of the most 
interesting (yet painful) is that soreness of mind which makes him 
treat the intrusions of Polonius with harshness, and that asperity 
which he puts on in his interviews with Ophelia. These tokens of 
an unhinged mind (if they be not mixed in the latter case with 
a profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia by affected dis- 
courtesies, so to prepare her mind for the breaking off of that lov- 
ing intercourse, which can no longer find a place amidst business so 
serious as that which he has to do) are parts of his character, which 
to reconcile with our admiration of Hamlet, the most patient con- 
sideration of his situation is no more than necessary ; they are what 
we forgive afterwards, and explain by the whole of his character, 
but at the time they are harsh and unpleasant. . . . [His behavior 
toward Ophelia] is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, and so 
it always makes itself to be felt by that object: it is not anger, but 
grief assuming the appearance of anger, — love awkwardly counter- 
feiting hate, as sweet countenances when they try to frown." " On 
the Tragedies of Shakespeare." (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 103-104.) 

He may he said to he amenable, etc. Cf. Coleridge (Works, IV, 
145) : "His thoughts, and the images of his fancy, are far more 
vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly 
passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as they 
pass, a form and a colour not naturally their own. Hence we see 
a great, an almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a proportionate 
aversion to real action, consequent upon it, with all its symptoms 
and accompanying qualities." 

P. 82. his father's spirit, i, 2, 255. 

/ loved Ophelia, v, i, 292. 

Sweets to the sweet, v, i, 266. 

P. 83. There is a willow. See p. 39. 

our author's plays acted. See pp. 70, 87. 

P. 84. Kemhle, John Philip (1757-1823), younger brother to Mrs. 
Siddons and noted as the leader of the stately school in tragedy. 



368 Notes 

Hazlitt often contrasted his manner with that of Kean: "We wish 
we had never seen Mr. Kean. He has destroyed the Kemble religion ; 
and it is the rehgion in which we were brought up." Works, VIII, 
345. 

a wave o' th' sea. "Winter's Tale," iv, 4, 141. 

Kean, Edmund (1787-1833), the great English tragic actor whom 
Hazlitt was instrumental in discovering for the London public. 
Shylock and Othello were his most successful roles. For accounts 
of his various performances, see " A View of the English Stage " 
(Works, VIII). Most of the points in this essay are reproduced 
from the notice of Kean's Hamlet (VIII, 185-189). 



ROMEO AND JULIET 
This extract is the opening paragraph of the sketch. 

P. 84. a great critic, A. W. Schlegel. , The passage alluded to by 
Hazlitt appears in Coleridge's Works (IV, 60-61) in what is little 
more than a free translation : " Read ' Romeo and Juliet ' ; — all is 
youth and spring; — youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipitan- 
cies; — spring with its odors, its flowers, and its transiency; it is one 
and the same feeling that commences, goes through, and ends the 
play. The old men, the Capulets and the Montagues, are not 
common old men ; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, 
the effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden 
marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth ; — whilst in 
Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale, 
all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the fresh- 
ness of the spring ; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last 
breeze of the Italian evening." 

P. 85. fancies wan. Cf. " Lycidas," " cowshps wan." 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 
These extracts are the second and last paragraphs of the essay. 

P. 85. Lord, what fools, iii, 2, 115. 

P. 86. human mortals, ii, i, loi. 

gorgons and hydras, " Paradise Lost," II, 628. 

a celebrated person, Sir Humphry Davy; see p. 342. Cf. 



Notes 369 

Coleridge (Works, IV, 66) : " Shakespeare was not only a great 
poet, but a great philosopher." 

P. 87. Poetry and the stage. Cf. Lamb, " On the Tragedies of 
Shakespeare" (ed. Lucas, I, no): "Spirits and fairies cannot be 
represented, they cannot even be painted, — they can only be be- 
lieved. But the elaborate and anxious provision of scenery, which 
the luxury of the age demands, in these cases works a quite con- 
trary effect to what is intended. That which in comedy, or plays 
of familiar life, adds so much to the life of the imitation, in plays 
which appeal to the higher faculties, positively destroys the illusion 
which it is introduced to aid." 



HENRY IV 

Hazhtt's interpretation of Falstaff is worth comparing with that 
of Maurice Morgann in " An Essay on the Dramatic Character of 
Sir John Falstaff," although Hazlitt does not allude to Morgann's 
essay and is supposed to have had no knowledge of it. " To me then 
it appears that the leading quality in Falstaff's character, and that 
from which all the rest take their colour, is a high degree of wit 
and humour, accompanied with great natural vigour and alacrity 
of mind. . . . He seems, by nature, to have had a mind free of 
maHce or any evil principle ; but he never took the trouble of ac- 
quiring any good one. He found himself esteemed and beloved 
with all his faults ; nay for his faults, which were all connected with 
humour, and for the most part grew out of it. As he had, pos- 
sibly, no vices but such as he thought might be openly confessed, 
so he appeared more dissolute thro' ostentation. To the char- 
acter of wit and humour, to which all his other qualities seem to 
have conformed themselves, he appears to have added a very neces- 
sary support, that of the profession of a Soldier. . . . Laughter 
and approbation attend his greatest excesses ; and being governed 
visibly by no settled bad principle or ill design, fun and humour 
account for and cover all. By degrees, however, and thro' in- 
dulgence, he acquires bad habits, becomes an humourist, grows 
enormously corpulent, and falls into the infirmities of age ; yet 
never quits, all the time, one single levity or vice of youth, or 
loses any of that cheerfulness of mind which had enabled him 
to pass thro' this course with ease to himself and delight to others ; 
and thus, at last, mixing youth and age, enterprize and corpulency, 



370 Notes 

wit and folly, poverty and expence, title and buffoonery, innocence 
as to purpose, and wickedness as to practice ; neither incurring hatred 
by bad principle, or contempt by cowardice, yet involved in circum- 
stances productive of imputation in both ; a butt and a wit, a humour- 
ist and a man of humour, a touchstone and a laughing stock, a 
jester and a jest, has Sir John Falstaff, taken at that period of life 
in which we see him, become the most perfect comic character that 
perhaps ever was exhibited." (Nichol Smith's "Eighteenth Cen- 
tury Essays on Shakespeare," 226-7.) 

P. 88. we behold. Cf. Colossians, ii, 9; "in him dwelleth all the 
fulness of the Godhead bodily." 

lards the lean earth, i "Henry IV," ii, 2, 116. 

into thin air. " Tempest," iv, i, 150. 

three fingers deep. Cf. i " Henry IV," iv, 2, 80 : " three fingers on 
the ribs." 

P. 89. it snows. Chaucer's Prologue to the " Canterbury Tales," 
345. 

ascends me. 2 " Henry IV," iv, 3, 105. 

a tun of man. 1 " Henry IV," ii, 4, 493. 

P. 91. open, palpable. Cf. i "Henry IV," ii, 4, 248: "These lies 
are like their father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, 
palpable." 

By the lord. Ibid., i, 2, 44. 

But Hal. Ibid., i, 2, 91. 

P. 92. who grew. Cf. ii, 4, 243 : " eleven buckram men grown out 
of two." 

Harry, I do not. ii, 4, 439. 

P. 94. What is the gross sum. 2 " Henry IV," ii, i, 91. 

P. 95. Would I were with him. " Henry V," ii, 3, 6. 

turning his vices. Cf. 2 " Henry IV," i, 2, 277 : "I will turn dis- 
eases to commodity." 

their legs. Ibid., ii, 4, 265. 

a man made after supper. Ibid., iii, 2, 332. 

Would, Cousin Silence. Ibid., iii, 2, 225. 

/ did not think. Ibid., v, 3, 40. 

in some authority. Ibid., v, 3, 117. 

You have here. Ibid., v, 3, 6. 



Notes 571 

TWELFTH NIGHT 

P. 96. It aims at the ludicrous. Cf. Hazlitt's remark in the Char- 
acters on " Much Ado About Nothing " : " Perhaps that middle point 
of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends 
with the tender, and our follies, turning round against themselves 
in support of our affections, retain nothing but their humanity." 

P. 97. William Congreve (1670-1729), William Wycherley (1640- 
1716), Sir John Vanhrugh (1664-1726), the chief masters of Restora- 
tion Comedy. 

P. 98. high fantastical, i, i, 15. 

Wherefore are these things hid. i, 3, 133. 

rouse the night-owl. ii, 3, 60. 

Dost thou think, ii, 3, 123. 

P; 99. We cannot agree with Dr. Johnson. See p. 49 and n. 

What's her history, ii, 4, 12. 

Oh it came o'er, i, i, 5. 

P. 100. They give a very echo, ii, 4, 21. 

Blame not this haste, iv, 3, 22. 

The essay concludes with the quotation of one of the songs and 
Malvolio's reading of the letter. 



MILTON 

P. loi. Blind Thamyris. " Paradise Lost," III, 35. 

P. 102. with darkness. VII, 27. 

piling up every stone. XI, 324. 

For after I had from my first years. "The Reason of Church 
Government," Book II, Introduction. 

P. 103. The noble heart. " Faerie Queene," I, v, i. 

P. 104. makes Ossa like a wart. " Hamlet," v, i, 306. 

Him followed Rimmon. " Paradise Lost," I, 467. 

As when a vulture. HI, 431. 

P. 105. the pilot. I, 204. 

It has been indeed objected to Milton. Cf. Coleridge (Works, ed. 
Shedd, IV, 304) : " Milton is not a picturesque, but a musical, poet " ; 
also Coleridge's "Table Talk," August 7, 1832: "It is very remark- 
able that in no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of 
the great painters of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art ; while 
every other page breathes his love and taste for music. . • , . Adam 



372 Notes 

bending oyer the sleeping Eve, in Paradise Lost, and Dalilah ap- 
proaching Samson, in the Agonistes, are the only two proper pic- 
tures I remember in Milton." 

Like a steam. " Comus," 556. 

P. 106. He soon saw. " Paradise Lost," III, 621. 

P. 107. With Atlantean shoulders. II, 306. 

Lay floating. I, 296. 

Dr. Johnson condemns the Paradise Lost. See the conclusion of 
his " Life of Milton." 

P. 108. His hand was known. " Paradise Lost," I, 732. 

But chief the spacious hall. I, 762. 

P. 109. Round he surveys. Ill, 555. 

Such MS the meeting soul. " L' Allegro." 

the ' ''iden soul. Ibid. 

P. .10. as Pope justly observes. "First Epistle of the Second 
l^ok of Horace," 102. 
-"^ P. III. As when Heavens fire. "Paradise Lost," I, 612. 

All is not lost. I, 206. 

that intellectual being. II, 147. 

being swallowed up. II, 149. 

P. 112. Fallen cherub. I, 157. 

rising aloft. I, 225. 

the mystic German critics. Cf. p. 344. 

P. 113. Is this the region. "Paradise Lost," I, 242. 

P. 114. Salmasius. At the request of Charles II, Claude de Sau- 
maise (Claudius Salmasius), professor at Leyden, had written a vin- 
dication of Charles I, " Defensio pro Carolo I" (1649), to which 
Milton replied with the "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano " (1651). 
The controversy between the two is noted for the virulency of the 
personal invective. 

with hideous ruin. " Paradise Lost," I, 46. 

retreated in a silent valley. II, 547. 

a noted political writer. Dr. Stoddart, editor of the Times and 
brother-in-law of Hazlitt, whom the critic bitterly hated, and Na- 
poleon are here referred to. Cf. " Political Essays," III, 158-159. 

P. 115. Longinus preferred the Iliad. "Whereas in the Iliad, 
which was written when his genius was in its prime, the whole 
structure of the poem is founded on action and struggle, in the 
Odyssey he generally prefers the narrative style, which is proper 
to old age. Hence Homer in his Odyssey may be compared to the 
setting sun : he is still as great as ever, but he has lost his fervent 



Notes 



373 



heat. The strain is now pitched in a lower key than in the ' Tale 
of Troy Divine ' : we begin to miss that high and equable sublimity 
which never flags or sinks, that continuous current of moving in- 
cidents, those rapid transitions, that force of eloquence, that opulence 
of imagery which is ever true to Nature. Like the sea when it 
retires upon itself and leaves its shores waste and bare, henceforth 
the tide of sublimity begins to ebb, and draws us away into the dim 
region of myth and legend. In saying this I am not forgetting the 
fine storm-pieces in the Odyssey, the story of the Cyclops, and other 
striking passages. It is Homer grown old I am discussing, but 
still it is Homer." On the Sublime, IX, trans. Havell. 

no kind of traffic. Cf. "Tempest," ii, i, 148. 

The generations were prepared. Wordsworth's " Excursion," VI, 

554- 

the unap parent deep. " Paradise Lost," VII, 103. 

P. 116. know to know no more. Cowper's "Truth," 327. 

They toiled not. Matthew, vi, 28. 

In them the burthen. Wordsworth's " Lines Composed above 
Tintern Abbey." 

such as angels weep. " Paradise Lost," I, 620. 

P. 117. In either hand. XII, 637. 



POPE 

This selection begins with the second paragraph of the fourth 
lecture on the " English Poets." 

P. 118. The question whether Pope was a poet. Hazlitt had writ- 
ten a paper in answer to this question in the Edinburgh Magazine 
for February, 1818 (Works, XII, 430-432), from which the following 
paragraphs down to " Such at least is the best account " are copied. 
The question had been previously answered by Dr. Johnson with 
the same common sense as by Hazlitt : " It is surely superfluous to 
answer the question that has once been asked, Whether Pope was a 
poet? otherwise than by asking in return, If Pope be not a poet, 
where is poetry to be found? To circumscribe poetry by a defini- 
tion will only shew the narrowness of the definer, though a defini- 
tion which shall exclude Pope will not easily be made." ("Life of 
Pope," ed. B. Hill, HI, 251). In their edition of Pope (II, 140), 
Elwin and Courthope express the opinion that the doubt which both 
Johnson and HazHtt felt called upon to refute " was never main- 



374 Notes 

tained b}^ a single person of reputation." Yet there is something 
very close to such a doubt implied in the utterances of Coleridge : 
" If we consider great exquisiteness of language and sweetness of 
metre alone, it is impossible to deny to Pope the character of a 
delightful writer ; but whether he was a poet, must depend upon our 
definition of the word. . . . This, I must say; that poetry, as dis- 
tinguished from other modes of composition, does not rest in metre, 
and that it is not poetry, if it make no appeal to our passions or our 
imagination." (Works, ed. Shedd, IV, 56.) Pope's verse was made 
the occasion of a long-winded controversy as to the relative value 
of the natural and artificial in poetry, lasting from 1819 to 1825, 
with William Bowles and Lord Byron as the principal combatants. 
Hazlitt contributed an article to the London Magazine for June, 
1821," Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles " (Works, XII, 486-508), in 
which he pointed out the fallacies in Byron's position and censured 
the clerical priggishness of Bowles in treating of Pope's life. The 
chief points in the discussion are best summed up in Prothe- 
ro's e(iition of Byron's " Letters and Journals," Vol. V, Appen- 
dix III. 

// indeed by a great poet we mean. Cf. Introduction, p. 1. 

P. 120. the pale reflex. " Romeo and Juliet," iii, 5, 20. 

P. 121. Martha Blount (1690-1762), the object of Pope's sentimen- 
tal attachment throughout his life. 

In Fortune's ray. " Troilus and Cressida," i, 3, 47. 

the gnarled oak . . . the soft myrtle. " Faerie Qu.," II, ii, 116-117. 

calm contemplation. Thomson's " Autumn," 1275. 

P. 122. More subtle web. " Faerie Queene," II, xii, 77. 

P. 123. from her fair head. " Rape of the Lock," III, 154. 

Now meet thy fate. Ibid., V, 87-96. 

P. 124. Lutrin. The " Lutrin " was a mock-heroic poem (1674- 
1683) of the French poet and critic, Nicolas Boileau Despreaux 
(1636-1711), the literary dictator of the age of Louis XIV. 

'Tis with our judgments. " Essay on Criticism," I, 9. 

Still green with bays. Ibid., I, 181. 
'P. 125. the writer's despair. Cf. Ibid., II, 278: 
" No longer now that Golden Age appears. 
When Patriarch-wits survived a thousand years : 
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost. 
And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast: 
Our sons their fathers' failing language see, 
And suGh as Chaucer is shall Dryden be." 



Notes 375 

with theirs should sail, " attendant sail." " Essay on Man," IV, v 
383-6. 

P. 126. There died. " Eloisa to Abelard," 40. 

P. 127. // ever chance. Ibid., 347. 

Bolingbroke. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751). 
"The Essay plainly appears the fabric of a poet: what Bolingbroke 
supplied could be only the first principles ; the order, illustration, 
and embellishments must be all Pope's." Pope's Works, ed. Elwin 
and Courthope, II, 264. 

P. 128. he spins, " draweth out." " Love's Labour's Lost," v, i, 
18. 

the very words. Cf. " Macbeth," i, 3, 88 : " the selfsame tune and 
words." 

Now night descending. " Dunciad," I, 89. 

Virtue may choose. " Epilogue to the Satires," Dialogue I, 137. 

P. 129. character of Chartres. " Moral Essays, Epistle III." 

his compliments. See p. 322. 

Where Murray. " Imitations of Horace, Epistle VI," 52. William 
Murray (1705-1793), Chief Justice of England, created Lord Mans- 
field in 1776. 

Why rail. "~ Epilogue to Satires," Dialogue II, 138. 

Despise low joys. " Epistle to Mr. Murray," 60. 

P. 130. character of Addison. "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," 193- 
214. 

Buckingham. George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham (1628- 
1687), statesman, wit, and poet. 

Alas! how changed. " Moral Essays," III, 305. 

Arbuthnot, John (1667-1735), physician and man of letters, whom 
Thackeray introduced in attendance at the death-bed of Francis 
Esmond. " He had a very notable share in the immortal History 
of John Bull, and the inimitable and praiseworthy Memoirs of 
Martinus Scriblerus. . . . Arbuthnot's style is distinguished from 
that of his contemporaries, even by a greater degree of terseness and 
conciseness. He leaves out every superfluous word ; is sparing of 
connecting particles, and introductory phrases ; uses always the sim- 
plest forms of construction ; and is more a master of the idiomatic 
peculiarities and internal resources "of the language than almost any 
other writer." " English Poets," Lecture VI. 

Charles Jervas (1675-1739) gave Pope lessons in painting. He is 
also known as a translator of " Don Quixote." 

Why did I write. " Epistle to Arbuthnot," 125. 



37^ Notes 

P. 131. Oh, lasting as those colours. " Epistle to Mr. Jervas," 63. 

who have eyes. Psalms, cxv, 5; cxxxv, 16, etc. 

It zvill never do. Hazlitt was fond of mimicking this phrase with 
which Jeffrey so unfortunately opened his well-known review of 
Wordsworth's " Excursion." 

/ lisp'd in numbers. " Epistle to Arbuthnot," 128. 

Et quum conahar scribere. Cf. Ovid's " Tristia," IV, x, 26: 
"Et, quod tentabam dicere, versus erat." 



PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 

The fifth lecture on the " Comic Writers." 

P. 133. the proper study. Pope's " Essay on Man," II, 2. 

comes home. Bacon's dedication of the Essays. 

Quicquid agunt homines. " Whatever things men do form the 
mixed substance of our book." Juvenal's " Satires," I, 85. With 
occasional exceptions, this appears as the motto of the first 78 num- 
ber of the Tatler. 

holds the mirror. " Hamlet," iii, 2, 24. 

the act and practic. Cf. " Henry V," i, i, 51 : " So that the art and 
practic part of life Must be the mistress to this theoric." 

P. 134. the web of our life. " All's Well That Ends Well," iv, 
3, 83. 

Quid sit pulchnim. " It tells us what is fair, what foul, what is 
useful, what not, more amply and better than Chrysippus and 
Crantor." Horace's " Epistles," I, ii, 3-4. 

Montaigne, Michel (1533-1592). "Essays," Books I and II, 1580; 
Book III, 1588. 

P. 135. not one of the angles. Sterne's "Tristram Shandy," Bk. 
Ill, Ch. 12. 

P. 136. pour out. " Imitation of Horace, Satire I," 51. 

P. 136, n. more wise Charron. See Pope's " Moral Essays," I, 87. 
Pierre Charron (1541-1603), a friend of Montaigne, author of 
" De la Sagesse " (1601). 

P. 137. Pereant isti. ^lius Donatus : St. Jerome's Commentary 
on the Eucharist, ch. i. Mr. Carr's translation of the sentence is 
" Confound the fellows who have said our good things before us." 
(Camelot Hazlitt.) 

P. 138. Charles Cotton's (1630-1687) translation of Montaigne 
was published in 1685. It was dedicated to George Savile, Marquis 



Notes 377 

of Halifax (1633-1695), who spoke of the essays as "the book in 
the world I am best entertained with." 

Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667). "Several Discourses by way of 
Essays in Prose and Verse " appeared in the edition of his works in 
1668. 

Sir William Temple (1628-1699). His essays, entitled "Miscel- 
lanea," were published in 1680 and 1692. 

Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713), author of "Characteristics" 
(1711). 

P. 139. the perfect spy. " Macbeth," iii, i, 130. 

The Tatler ran from April 12, 1709, to June 2, 171 1. This para- 
graph and the larger portion of the next are substantially repro- 
duced from the paper " On the Tatler " in the " Round Table." 

Isaac Bickerstaff. Under the disguise of this name Swift had 
perpetrated an amusing hoax on an almanac-maker of the name of 
Partridge, and in launching his new periodical Steele availed him- 
self of the notoriety of Bickerstaff's name and feigned his identity 
with that personage. 

P. 140. the disastrous stroke. Cf. "Othello," i, 3, 157: "some 
distressful stroke that my youth suffered." 

the recollection of one of his mistresses. Tatler, No. 107. 

the club at the Trumpet. 132. 

the cavalcade. 86. 

the upholsterer. 155, 160, 178. 

// he walks out, etc. 238. 

P. 141. Charles Lillie, perfumer, at the corner of Beaufort Build- 
ings in the Strand, was agent for the sale of the Tatler and Spec- 
tator and is several times mentioned in those periodicals. 

Betterton, Thomas (i63S?-i7io), Anne Oldfield ■ (1683-1730), 
Will [Richard] Estcourt (1668-1712), were popular actors of the 
day. 

Tom Durfey (1653-1723) was a dramatist and song writer. 

Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), and Marshal Turenne (1611- 

1675). 

The Spectator ran from March i, 171 1, to December 6, 1712, with 
an additional series from June 18 to December 20, 1714. 

the first sprightly runnings. Dryden's " Aurengzebe," iv, i. 

P. 142. Addison, Joseph (1672-1719). 

the whiteness of her hand. Cf. Spectator, No. 113. "She cer- 
tainly has the finest hand of any woman in the world." 

the havoc he makes. Spectator, 116, by Budgell. 



378 Notes 

his speech from the bench and his unwillingness. 122. 

his gentle reproof. 130. 

his doubts, iiy. 

P. 143. his account of the family pictures. 109, by Steele. 

his choice of a chaplain. 106. 

his falling asleep at church and his reproof of John Williams, 
i.e., John Matthews. 112. 

/ once thought I knew. Cf. " On the Conversation of Authors," 
where A (William Ayrton) is introduced as " the Will Honey- 
comb of our set." 

The Court of Honour. Addison created the court in Tatler, 250. 
Its proceedings are recorded by himself and Steele in Nos. 253, 
256, 259, 262, 265. 

Personification of Musical Instruments. Tatler, 153, 157. 

the picture of the family. Tatler, 95, of unknown authorship. 

P. 144. the account of the two sisters. 151. 

the married lady. 104. 

the lover and his mistress. 94. 

the bridegroom. 82. 

Mr. Eustace and his wife. 172. 

the fine dream, iiy. 

Mandeville, Bernard (d. 1733), author of the satirical "Fable of 
the Bees." 

reflections on cheerfulness. Spectator, 381, 387, 393. 

those in Westminster Abbey. 26. 

Royal Exchange. 69. 

P. 145. the best criticism. 226. 

Mr. Fuseli, Henry (1741-1825), painter and art critic. 

an original copy. Probably the octavo edition of 171 1. 

The Guardian ran from March 12, 1713, to October i, 1713. 

The Rambler ran from March 20, 1749-50, to March 14, 1752. 

Dr. Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784). 

P. 146. give us pause. " Hamlet," iii, i, 68. 

P. 147. All his periods, etc. See the " Character of Burke " and 
the preface to " The Characters of Shakespeare's Plays." 

P. 148. the elephant. " Paradise Lost," IV, 345. 

// he were to write. Boswell's " Johnson," ed. Birkbeck Hill, II, 
231. 

P. 149. Rasselas, an Oriental tale, published in 1759. 

abused Milton and patronized Lauder. See Boswell's " Johnson," 
I, 228-231. 



Notes 379 

P. 150. Boswell, James (1740-1795), made his literary reputation 
by his " Life of Johnson." 

the king of good fellows. Burns's " Auld Rab Morris." 

inventory of all he said. Cf. Ben Jonson's " Alchemist," iii, 2 : 
" And ta'en an inventory of what they are." 

Goldsmith asked. Boswell's "Johnson," II, 260. 

// that fellow Burke. II, 450. 

What, is it you. I, 250. 

P. 151. with some unidead girls. I, 251. 

Now, I think. II, 362. 

his quitting the society. I, 201. 

his dining with Wilkes. Ill, 64. 

his sitting with the young ladies. II, 120. 

his carrying the unfortunate victim. IV, 321. 

an act which realises the parable. Talfourd, who heard this lec- 
ture, reports that on Hazlitt's allusion to this incident " a titter 
arose from some who were struck by the picture as ludicrous, and 
a murmur from others who deemed the allusion unfit for ears 
polite : he paused for an instant, and then added, in his sturdiest and 
most impressive manner — ' an act which realizes the parable of the 
Good Samaritan ' — at which his moral, and his delicate hearers 
shrank, rebuked, into deep silence. 

where they. Gray's " Elegy." 

P. 152. The Adventurer ran from November 7, 1752, to March 
9, 1754. John Hawkesworth (1715-1773) was its chief contrib- 
utor. 

The World ran from January 4, 1753, to December 30, 1756. 

The Connoisseur ran from January 31, 1754, to September 30, 1756. 

one good idea. The paper referred to is No. 176 of The World, 
by Edward Moore, the dramatist. 

Citizen of the World, in two volumes, 1762. 

go about to cozen. Cf . " Merchant of Venice," ii, 9, 2>7 '■ " To cozen 
fortune and be honorable Without the stamp of merit." 

Persian Letters. " Letters from a Persian in England to his 
Friend at Ispahan" (1735), by Lord Lyttleton. 

P. 153. The bonzes. " Citizen of the World," Letter X. 

Edinburgh. We are positive. Ibid., Letter V. 

Beau Tibbs. Letters XXIX, LIV, LV, LXXXI. 

Lounger ran from February 5, 1785, to January 6, 1786, The 
Mirror from January 23, 1779, to May 27, 1780. The chief con- 
tributor to both was Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), author of the 



380 Notes 

celebrated sentimental novels: "The Man of Feeling" (1771), 
"The Man of the World" (i773), "Julia de Roubigne " (1777). 

the story of La Roche. Mirror, 42, 43, 44. 

the story of Le Fevre. " Tristram Shandy," Bk. VI, ch. 6. 

P. 154. author of Rosamond Gray. Charles Lamb. 



THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 

From the sixth lecture on the " Comic Writers." Most of the 
matter had appeared in the Edinburgh Review for February, 1815, 
as a review of Madame D'Arblay's "Wanderer." (See Works, X, 
25-44.) In "A Farewell to Essay-Writing" (Works, XII, 327) 
Hazlitt harks back to his days with Charles and Mary Lamb : " I 
will not compare our hashed mutton with Amelia's ; but it put us 
in mind of it, and led to a discussion, sharply seasoned and well 
sustained, till midnight, the result of which appeared some years 
after in the Edinburgh Review." 

P. 155. Be mine to read. To Richard West, April, 1742. 

Marivaux, Pierre (1688-1763), and Crehillon, Claude Prosper 
(1707-1777), French novelists. 

something more divine. Cf. p. 254. 

P. 156. Fielding . . . says. " Joseph Andrews," .Bk. Ill, ch. i. 

description somewhere given. " Reflections on the French Revo- 
lution," ed. Bohn, II, 351-352. 

P. 157. Echard. John Eachard (1636-1697), author of "The 
Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion 
Enquired into." (1670.) 

worthy of all acceptation, i Timothy, i, 15. 

the lecture. " Joseph Andrews," Bk. IV, ch. 3. 

Blackstone, Sir William (1723-1780), author of " Commentaries on 
the Laws of England" (1765-69). 

De Lolme, John Louis (i740?-i8o7), author of "The Constitu- 
tion of England" (1771). 

Cervantes, Miguel (1547-1616), Spanish novelist whose most fa- 
mous work is " Don Quixote." 

Le Sage, Alain Rene (1668-1747), French novelist, author of "Gil 
Bias." 

Fielding, Henry (1707-1754). His most important novels are 
"Joseph Andrews" (1742), " Tom Jones " (1749), " Amelia " (i75i), 
"Jonathan Wild" (i743)- 



Notes 381 

Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771), wrote "Roderick Random" (1748), 
"Peregrine Pickle" (1751), "Ferdinand Count Fathom" (1753), 
"Launcelot Greaves" (1762), "Humphrey Clinker" (1771). 

Richardson, Samuel (1689-1761), wrote "Pamela" (1740), 
"Clarissa Harlowe " (1747-48), "Sir Richard Grandison " (1753). 

Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768), wrote "Tristram Shandy" (1759- 
67), "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" (1768). 

P. 158. in these several writers. A few paragraphs are here 
omitted treating of "Don Quixote," " Lazarillo de Tormes " (1553), 
"Guzman d'Alfarache " by Mateo Aleman (1599), and "Gil- 
Bias." 

They are thoroughly English. In the review of Walpole's 
Letters (Works, X, 168), Hazlitt says: "There is nothing of a tea 
inspiration in any of his [Fielding's] novels. They are assuredly 
the finest thing of the kind in the language; and we are English- 
men enough to consider them the best in any language. They are in- 
dubitably the most English of all the works of Englishmen." 

Hogarth, William (1697-1764), painter and engraver of moral and 
satirical subjects. His two most famous series of paintings are 
" The Rake's Progress " and " Marriage a la Mode." Lamb in his 
" Essay on the Genius and Character of Hogarth " observes : " Other 
pictures we look at, — his prints we read." Hazlitt, sharing this view, 
includes an account of Hogarth in the seventh lecture of the 
" Comic Writers," which opens as follows : " If the quantity of 
amusement, or of matter for more serious reflection which their 
works have afforded, is that by which we are to. judge of precedence 
among the intellectual benefactors of mankind, there are, perhaps, 
few persons who can put in a stronger claim to our gratitude than 
Hogarth. It is not hazarding too much to assert, that he was one 
of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived." 

P. 159. the gratitude of the elder Blifil. Bk. I, ch. 13. 

the Latin dialogues, etc. Bk. II, chs. 3-4. 

P. 160. honesty of Black George. Bk. VI, ch. 13. 

/ was never so handsome. Bk. XVII, ch. 4. 

the adventure with the highwayman. Bk. VII, ch. 9. 

Sophia and her muff. Bk. V, ch. 4. 

coquetry of her cousin. Bk. XVI, ch. 9. 

the modest overtures. Bk. XV, ch. 11. 

the story of Tom Jones. Cf . Coleridge's " Table Talk," July 5, 
1834: "I think the CEdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom 
Jones, the three most perfect plots ever planned." 



382 Notes 

account of Miss Matthews and Ensign Hibbert [Hebbers]. Bk. I, 
chs. 7-9. 

P. 161. the story of the miniature picture. Bk. XI, ch. 6. 

the hashed mutton. Bk. X, ch. 6. 

the masquerade. Bk. X, ch. 2. 

the interview. Bk. X, chs. 2, 8. 

P. 162. His declaring. Bk. Ill, ch. 3. 

his consoling himself. Bk. Ill, ch. 2. 

the night-adventures. Bk. IV, ch. 14. 

that with the huntsman. Bk. Ill, ch. 6. 

Wilson's account. Bk. Ill, ch. 3. 

P. 163. Roderick Random's carroty locks, ch. 13. 

Strap's ignorance, ch. 14. 

iw^M.y ^^ in cute. Persius' " Satires," III, 30. 

P. 164. scene on ship-board, ch. 24. 

profligate French friar, chs. 42-43. 

P. 165. the Count's address, ch. 27. 

the robber-scene, chs. 20-21. 

the Parisian swindler, ch. 24. 

the seduction, ch. 34. 

P. 166. the long description. The allusions to Miss Byron's dress 
in Vol. VII, Letter III, can scarcely be called a long description. 

P. 167. Dr. Johnson seems to have preferred. Cf . Boswell's " John- 
son," ed. Hill, II, 174: "Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart 
in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones." 

P. 168. reproaches to her " lumpish heart!' " Pamela," ed. Dob- 
son and Phelps, I, 268. 

its lightness. I, 276. 

the joy. II, 7-25. 

the artifice of the stuif-gown. I, 51. 

the meeting with Lady Davers. II, 145 fif. 

the trial-scene with her husband. IV, 122 ff. 

P. 169. her long dying-scene. " Clarissa Harlowe," ed. Dobson and 
Phelps, Vol. VIII, Letter 29. 

the closing of the coMn-lid. VIII, Letter 50. 

the heart-breaking reflections. VI, Letter 29. 

Books are a real world. Wordsworth's " Personal Talk." 

Lovelace's reception and description of Hickman. VI, Letter 80. 

the scene at the glove-shop. VII, Letter 70. 

Belton, so pert. I, Letter 31. 

his systematically preferring. Cf. "Why the Heroes of Ro- 



Notes 383 

mances are Insipid " (Works, XII, 62) : " There is not a single thing 
that Sir Charles Grandison does or says all through the book from 
liking to any person or object but himself, and with a view to an- 
swer to a certain standard of perfection for which he pragmatically 
sets up. He is always thinking of himself, and trying to show that 
he is the wisest, happiest, and most virtuous person in the whole 
world. He is (or would be thought) a code of Christian ethics; 
a compilation and abstract of all gentlemanly accomplishments. 
There is nothing, I conceive, that excites so httle sympathy as this 
inordinate egotism; or so much disgust as this everlasting self- 
complacency. Yet this self-admiration, brought forward on every 
occasion as the incentive to every action and reflected from all 
around him, is the burden and pivot of the story." 

P. 170. a dull fellow. Boswell's " Johnson," ed. Birkbeck Hill, II, 
222. 

the tale of Maria. Bk. IX, ch. 24. 

the apostrophe to the recording angel. Bk. VI, ch. 8. 

the story of Le Fevre. Bk. VI, ch. 6. 

The rest of the lecture treats of Fanny Burney, Anne Radcliffe, 
Elizabeth Inchbald, William Godwin, and Sir Walter Scott. 



CHARACTER OF MR. BURKE 

First published in the " Eloquence of the British Senate " and re- 
published in " Political Essays." 

P. 172. The following speech. Hazlitt refers to the speech On 
the Economic Reform (February 11, 1780). See Burke's Works, 
ed. Bohn, II, 55-126. 

P. 174. the elephant to make them sport. " Paradise Lost," IV, 
345- 

native and endued. " Hamlet," iv, 7, 180. 

Lord Chatham. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778), the 
great English statesman. 

P. 176. a new creation. Goldsmith's " Traveler," 296. 

P. 178. All the great changes. Cf. Morley's " Life of Burke," 
ch. 8 : " All really profound speculation about society comes in time 
to touch the heart of every other object of speculation, not by 
directly contributing new truths or directly corroborating old ones, 
but by setting men to consider the consequences to life of different 
opinions on these abstract subjects, and their relations to the great 



384 Notes 

paramount interests of society, however those interests may happen 
at the time to be conceived. Burke's book marks a turning-point in 
literary history, because it was the signal for that reaction over the 
whole field of thought, into which the Revolution drove many of the 
finest minds of the next generation, by showing the supposed con- 
sequences of pure individuahstic rationalism." 

P. 179. Alas! Leviathan. Cowper's "Task," II, 322. 

the corner stone. Psalms, cxvii, 22. 

to the Jews, i Corinthians, i, 22,. 

P. 183. the consequences of his writings. In this view Hazlitt has 
the full support of Lord Morley. 

P. 184. How charming. Milton's " Comus," 476. 

He was one of the severest writers we have. The description of 
Burke's style which follows should be compared with that given on 
pp. 344-5 and with the splendid passage in the " Plain Speaker " essay 
" On the Prose Style of Poets," beginning: " It has always appeared 
to me that the most perfect prose-style, the most powerful, the most 
dazzling, the most daring, that which went the nearest to the verge 
of poetry, and yet never fell over, was Burke's. It has the solidity, 
and sparkling effect of the diamond; all other fine writing is like 
French paste or Bristol-stones in the comparison. Burke's style is 
airy, flighty, adventurous, but it never loses sight of the subject; 
nay, is always in contact with, and derives its increased or varying 
impulse from it. It may be said to pass yawning gulfs ' on the 
unsteadfast footing of a spear: ' still it has an actual resting-place 
and tangible support under it — it is not suspended on nothing. It 
differs from poetry, as I conceive, like the chamois from the eagle : 
it climbs to an almost equal height, touches upon a cloud, overlooks 
a precipice, is picturesque, sublime — but all the while, instead of 
soaring through the air, it stands upon a rocky cliff, clambers up by 
abrupt and intricate ways, and browzes on the roughest bark, or 
crops the tender flower." 

P. 186. the set or formal style. See pp. 147-8. 

P. 187. Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), 
a criticism of the ministerial policy of the English government under 
George III. 

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a severe arraign- 
ment of the principles which inspired the revolution and a prophetic 
warning of its consequences. 

. Letter to the Duke of Bedford. A Letter from the Right Hon. 
Edmund Burke, to a Noble Lord, on the attacks made upon him and 



Notes 385 

his pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and 
the Earl of Lauderdale, early in the present session of Parliament. 
(1796.) 

Regicide Peace. Three Letters addressed to a Member of the 
Present Parliament, on the proposals for peace with the regicide 
Directory of France. (1796.) 

P. 188. Fox, Charles James (1749-1806), the famous Whig states- 
man who was frequently the opponent of Burke and of the younger 
Pitt. 

P. 189. Dr. Johnson observed, in his "Life of Pope" (ed. Birk- 
beck Hill, HI, 230) : " In their similes the greatest writers have 
sometimes failed : the ship-race, compared with the chariot-race, is 
neither illustrated nor aggrandised ; land and water make all the 
difference: when Apollo running after Daphne is likened to a grey- 
hound chasing a hare, there is no-thing gained ; the ideas of pur- 
suit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and 
the daughter of a god are not represented much to their advantage 
by a hare and a dog." 

a person. Conjecturally Joseph Fawcett. In the essay "On 
Criticism" ("Table Talk") Hazlitt says: "The person of the most 
refined and least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph 
Fawcett, the friend of my youth. He was almost the first literary 
acquaintance I ever made, and I think the most candid and un- 
sophisticated. He had a masterly perception of all styles and of 
every kind and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from 
Milton's Paradise Lost to Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad, from Butler's 
Analogy down to Humphrey Clinker." 

P. 189, n. the comparison of the British Constitution. " Letter 
to a Noble Lord," Works, ed. Bohn, V, I37- 



MR. WORDSWORTH 

From " The Spirit of the Age." Characterizations of Wordsworth 
also occur in the lecture " On the Living Poets " and in the Essay 
" On Genius and Common Sense " in " Table Talk." 

P. 191. lowliness is young ambitions ladder. "Julius Caesar," ii, 
I, 22. 

no figures. Cf. "Julius Csesar," ii, i, 231: "Thou hast no figures 
nor no fantasies Which busy care draws in the brains of men." 

skyey influences. " Measure for Measure," iii, i, 9. 



386 Notes 

P. 192. nihil humani. Terence: " Heautontimoroumenos," i, i, 25. 

the cloud-capt towers. "Tempest," iv, i, 151. 

P. 193. the judge's robe. Cf. "Measure for Measure," ii, 2, 59: 
" No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, 
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, 
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe." 

Pindar and Alcceus. Greek lyric poets. 

a sense of joy. Wordsworth's " To My Sister." 

P. 194. Beneath the hills. Cf. Wordsworth's "Excursion," VI, 
531: 

"Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills 
The generations are prepared ..." 

P. 195. To him the meanest Hower. " Ode on the Intimations of 
Immortality." 

P. 196. Grasmere was the residence of Wordsworth between 1799 
and 1813. 

Cole-Orton was the residence of Wordsworth's friend. Sir George 
Beaumont, to whom he dedicated the 1815 edition of his poems: 
" Some of the best pieces were composed under the shade of your 
own groves, upon the classic ground of Cole-Orton." 

P. 197. Calm contemplation. Cf. " Laodamia " : " Calm pleasures 
there abide, majestic pains." 

Fall blunted " from each indurated heart." Goldsmith's 
" Traveler," 232. 

and fit audience. Wordsworth quotes this hne from " Paradise 
Lost," VII, 31, in "The Recluse," 776: 

" ' Fit audience let me find though few ! ' 

So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard — 
In holiest mood." 

P. 198. The Excursion. Hazhtt wrote a review of this poem for 
the Examiner which not only aroused Wordsworth's resentment 
but led to one of his disagreements with Lamb. The review appears 
in the " Round Table." 

toujours perdrix, " always partridges," alluding to a story of a 
French king, who, on being reproved by his confessor for faithless- 
ness to his wife, punished the offender by causing him to be fed on 
nothing but his favorite dish, which was partridge. See Notes and 
Queries, Series IV, Vol. Ill, p. 336. 

In his person. In 1803, while on a visit to the Lake Country, 
Hazlitt had painted a portrait of Wordsworth. " He has painted 
Wordsworth," writes Southey, " but so dismally, though Words- 



Notes 387 

worth's face is his idea of physiognomical perfection, that one of his 
friends, on seeing it, exclaimed, ' At the gallows — deeply affected 
by his deserved fate — yet determined to die like a man; ' and if you 
saw the picture, you would admire the criticism." " Life and Cor- 
respondence," II, 238. 
His manner of reading. See p. 295. 
a man of no mark, i " Henry IV," lii, 2, 45, 

P. 199. He finds fault with Dryden's description. Hazlitt adopted 
this criticism in his lecture " On Pope and Dryden." 

P. 200. Titian (c. 1477-1576), the great Venetian painter. 
Chaucer. Wordsworth's modernizations of Chaucer are " The 
Prioress's Tale," " The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," and a part of 
" Troilus and Cressida." 

a tragedy. " The Borderers " was written in 1795-96 but not 
published till 1842. The quotation which follows is from Act iii, i, 
405, and should read : 

" Action is transitory — a step, a blow. 
The motion of a muscle — this way or that — 
'Tis done, and in the after-vacancy 
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed: 
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, 
And shares the nature of infinity." 
Wordsworth quoted these lines after the dedication to " The White 
Doe of Rylstone " and later added a note : " This and the five lines 
that follow were either read or recited by me more than thirty 
years since, to the late Mr. Hazlitt, who quoted some expressions 
in them (imperfectly remembered) in a work of his published sev- 
eral years ago." 

P. 201. Let observation. Cf. De Quincey's " Rhetoric " (Works, 
ed. Masson, X, 128) : " We recollect a little biographic sketch of 
Dr. Johnson, published immediately after his death, in which, among 
other instances of desperate tautology, the author quotes the well- 
known lines from the Doctor's imitation of Juvenal — ' Let observa- 
tion,' etc., and contends with some reason that this is saying in 
effect, — 'Let observation with extensive observation observe man- 
kind extensively.' " Coleridge somewhere makes the same remark. 

Drawcansir. A character in " The Rehearsal " by the Duke of 
Buckingham. 

" Let petty kings the names of Parties know : 
Where'er I am, I slay both friend and foe." v, i. 
Walton's Angler. In the fifth lecture of the " Enghsh Poets " 



388 Notes 

Hazlitt writes : " Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that 
prose-poem, Walton's Complete Angler. That well-known work 
has a beauty and romantic interest equal to its simplicity, and 
arising out of it. In the description of a fishing-tackle, you per- 
ceive the piety and humanity of the author's mind. It is to be 
doubted whether Sannazarius's Piscatory Eclogues are equal to 
the scenes described by Walton on the banks of the river Lea. He 
gives the feeling of the open air : we walk with him along the dusty 
roadside, or repose on the banks of a river under a shady tree ; 
and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls 
' the patience and simplicity of poor honest fishermen.' We accom- 
pany them to their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but 
delicious fare ; while Maud, the pretty milkmaid, at her mother's 
desire, sings the classical ditties of the poet Marlow; 'Come live 
with me, and be my love.' " 

Paley, William (1743-1805), a noted theologian. Cf. "On the 
Clerical Character " in " Pohtical Essays " (Works, III, 276) : " This 
same shuffling divine is the same Dr. Paley, who afterwards em- 
ployed the whole of his life, and his moderate second-hand abilities, 
in tampering with religion, moralit}^, and politics, — in trimming 
between his convenience and his conscience, — in crawling between 
heaven and earth, and trying to cajole both. His celebrated and 
popular work on Moral Philosophy, is celebrated and popular for 
no other reason, than that it is a somewhat ingenious and amusing 
apology for existing abuses of any description, by which any thing 
is to be got. It is a very elaborate and consolatory elucidation of 
the text, that men should not quarrel with their bread and butter. It 
is not an attempt to show what is right, but to palliate and find out 
plausible excuses for what is wrong. It is a work without the least 
value, except as a convenient commonplace book or vade mecum, 
for tyro politicians and young divines, to smooth their progress in 
the Church or the State. This work is a text-book in the Univer- 
sity: its morality is the acknowledged moraHty of the House of 
Commons." See also Coleridge's opinion of Paley on p. 288. 

Bewick, Thomas (1753-1828), a well-known wood-engraver. 

Waterloo, Antoine (i6o9?-i676?), a French engraver, painter, and 
etcher. 

Rembrandt, Harmans van Rijn (1606-1669), Dutch painter, whose 
mastery of light and shade was the object of Hazlitt's special ad- 
miration. 

P. 202. He hates conchology, etc. See the lecture " Qn the Living 



Notes 389 

Poets " : '' He hates all science and all art ; he hates chemistry, he 
hates conchology ; he hates Voltaire ; he hates Sir Isaac Newton ; he 
hates wisdom ; he hates wit ; he hates metaphysics, which he says are 
unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand them; he 
hates prose; he hates all poetry but his own; he hates the dialogues in 
Shakespeare; he hates music, dancing, and painting; he hates 
Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates Titian; 
he hates Vandyke ; he hates the antique ; he hates the Apollo Bel- 
videre ; he hates the Venus of Medicis." 

Where one for sense. Butler's " Hudibras," II, 29. 

P. 203. take the good. Plautus's " Rudens," iv, 7. 



MR. COLERIDGE 
From the " Spirit of the Age." 

P. 205. and thank. Cf. " Comus," 176: '* In wanton dance they 
praise the bounteous Pan." 

a mind reflecting. See p. 35 and n. 

dark rearward. Cf . " Tempest," i, 2, 50 : " In the dark backward 
and abysm of time." 

P. 206. That which was. " Antony and Cleopatra," iv, 14, 9. 

quick, forgetive. 2 " Henry IV," iv, 3, 107. 

what in him is weak. Cf. " Paradise Lost," I, 22 : " What in me 
is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support." 

P. 207. and by the force. Cf. "Macbeth," iii, 5, 28: "As by the 
strength of their illusion Shall draw him on to his confusion." 

rich strond. " Faerie Queene," III, iv, 18, 29, 34. 

goes Sounding. " Hazlitt seems to have had a hazy recollection 
of two passages in Chaucer's Prologue. In his essay on ' My First 
Acquaintance with Poets,' he says, ' the scholar in Chaucer is de- 
scribed as going " sounding on his way," ' and in his Lectures on 
the English Poets he says, ' the merchant, as described in Chaucer, 
went on his way " sounding always the increase of his winning." ' 
The scholar is not described as ' sounding on his way,' but Chaucer 
says of him, * Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,' while the 
merchant, though * souninge alway th' encrees of his winning,' is not 
described as going on his way. Wordsworth has a line ('Excur- 
sion,' Book III), 'Went sounding on a dim and perilous way,' but 
it seems clear that Hazlitt thought he was quoting Chaucer." Waller- 
Glover, IV, 412. 



390 Notes 

P. 208. his own nothings. " Coriolanus," ii, 2, 81. 

letting contemplation. Cf. Dyer's " Grongar Hill," 26 : " till 
contemplation have its fill." 

Sailing with supreme dominion. Gray's " Progress of Poesy." 

He lisped. Pope's " Prologue to the Satires," 128. 

Ode on Chatterton. " Monody on the Death of Chatterton," writ- 
ten by Coleridge in 1790, at the age of eighteen. 

P. 209. gained several prizes. " At Cambridge Coleridge won the 
Browne Gold Medal for a Greek Ode in 1792." Waller-Glover. 

At Christ's Hospital, a London school which Leigh Hunt and 
Lamb attended about the same time as Coleridge. The former has 
left a record of its life in his " Autobiography," and Lamb has writ- 
ten of it, with special reference to Coleridge, in his " Recollections of 
Christ's Hospital " and " Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years 
Ago." 

Struggling in vain. " Excursion," VI, 557. 

P. 210. Hartley, David (1705-1757), author of "Observations on 
Man" (1749), and identified chiefly with the theory of association. 
Cf . Coleridge's " Religious Musings," 368 : " and he of mortal kind 
Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres 
through the sentient brain." 

Dr. Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804), scientist and philosopher of 
the materialistic school, author of " The Doctrine of Philosophical 
Necessity Illustrated" (1777). "See! Priestley there, patriot, and 
saint, and sage." " Religious Musings," 371. 

Bishop Berkeley's fairy-world. George Berkeley (1685-1753), ide- 
alistic philosopher. Cf. p. 287. 

Malebranche, Nicholas (1638-1715), author of " De la Recherche 
de la Verite " (1674). 

Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688), author of "The True Intellectual 
System of the Universe" (1678). 

Lord Brook's hieroglyphical theories. Fulke Greville, Lord 
Brooke (1554-1628), friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sid- 
ney. 

Bishop Butler's Sermons. Joseph Butler (1692-1752), author 
of "Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel" (1726), and 
" The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitu- 
tion and Course of Nature" (1736). 

Duchess of Newcastle. Margaret Cavendish (i624?-i674), pub- 
lished about a dozen folio volumes of philosophical fancies, poems, 
and plays. In " Mackery End in Hertfordshire " Lamb refers to her 



Notes 391 

as " the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat 
fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle." 

Clarke, Samuel (1675-1729), English theologian of latitudinarian 
principles. 

South, Robert (1634-1716), controversial writer and preacher. 
Tillotson, John (1630-1694), a popular theological writer of ra- 
tionalistic tendency. 

Leibnitz's Pre-established Harmony. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz 
(1646-1716), a German philosopher, represented the world as con- 
sisting of an infinite number of independent substances or monads 
related to each other in such a way (by the pre-established harmony) 
as to form one universe. Cf. Coleridge's " Destiny of Nations," 
38 ff.: 

" Others boldlier think 
That as one body seems the aggregate 
Of atoms numberless, each organized; 
So by a strange and dim similitude 
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds 
Are an all-conscious spirit, which informs 
With absolute ubiquity of thought 
(His own eternal self-affirming act!) 
All his involved Monads, that yet seem 
With various province and apt agency 
Each to pursue its own self-centering end." 
P. 210, n. And so by many. " Two Gentlemen of Verona," ii, 7,30. 
P. 211. hortus siccus [dry garden] of Dissent. Burke's "Reflec- 
tions on the French Revolution," Works, ed. Bohn, II, 287. 
John Huss (i373?-i4i5), Bohemian reformer and martyr. 
Jerome of Prague, a follower of Huss who was burnt for heresy 
in 1416. 

Socinus. Fausto Paulo Sozzini (1539-1604), an Italian theologian 
who sought to simplify the doctrine of the Trinity. 

John Zisca (i370?-i424), a leader of the extreme Hussite party. 
Neal's History. Daniel Neal (1648-1743) published his "History 
of the Puritans " 1732-38. 

Calamy, Edmund (1671-1732) published an "Account of the Min- 
isters, Lecturers, Masters and Fellows of Colleges, and School- 
masters who were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration of 1660" 
(1702 and 1713)- 

Spinoza, Baruch (1632-1677), a Dutch philosopher of Jewish 
parentage, the chief representative of Pantheism, " the doctrine of 



392 Notes 

one infinite substance, of which all finite existences are modes 
or limitations." 

When he saw. Cf. Coleridge's "Remorse," iv, 2, 100: 
" When we saw nought but beauty ; when we heard 
The voice of that Almighty One who loved us 
In every gale that breathed, and wave that murmur'd ! " 

Proclus (410-485) and Plotinus (204-270), philosophers of the 
Neo-Platonic school. In " Biographia Literaria " (chap. 9) Coleridge 
refers to his " early study of Plato and of Plotinus, with the com- 
mentaries and the ' Theologia Platonica ' of the illustrious Floren- 
tine; of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho." 

Duns Scotus (1265 or 1275-1308) and Thomas Aquinas (1227- 
1274), two great theologians of the Catholic Church. 

Jacob Behmen or Bohme (1575-1624), a German religious mystic 
who exerted considerable influence on English religious thought in 
the eighteenth century. In the " Biographia Literaria " (chap. 9) 
Coleridge writes : " A meek and shy quietist, his intellectual powers 
were never stimulated into feverous energy by crowds of proselytes, 
or by the ambition of proselyting. Jacob Behmen was an enthusiast 
in the strictest sense, as not merely distinguished, but as contra- 
distinguished from a fanatic. . . . The writings of these Mystics 
acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned 
within the outline of any single dogmatic system." 

Swedenhorg, Emanuel (1688-1772), the Swedish scientist and 
mystic from whom have sprung some of the modern theosophical 
cults. 

Religious Musings, published in his " Poems on Various Sub- 
jects" (1796). 

the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor. Cf. " Literature of the Age 
of Elizabeth," Lecture VII : " In his writings, the frail stalk of 
human life reclines on the bosom of eternity. His Holy Living 
and Dying is a divine pastoral. He writes to the faithful follow- 
ers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his flock. He introduces 
touching and heartfelt appeals to familiar life; condescends to men 
of low estate; and his pious page blushes with modesty and 
beauty. His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours of the rain- 
bow ; it floats like the bubble through the air ; it is like innumerable 
dew-drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble as they 
glitter. He does not dig his way underground, but sHdes upon ice, 
borne on the winged car of fancy. The dancing light he throws 
upon objects is like an Aurora Borealis, playing betwixt heaven 



Notes 393 

and earth. ... In a word, his writings are more like fine poetry 
than any other prose whatever ; they are a choral song in praise of 
virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit of the Universe." 

Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850), published "Fourteen Sonnets" 
in 1789, and a second edition containing twenty-one in the same 
year. In the first chapter of the " Biographia Literaria," Coleridge 
credits the sonnets of Bowles with saving him from a premature 
absorption in metaphysics and theology and with introducing him 
to the excellences of the new school of poetry. In his enthusiasm 
he went about making proselytes for Bowles and " as my school 
finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within less 
than a year and a half, more than forty transcriptions, as the best 
presents I could ofifer to those, who had in any way won my re- 
gard. And with almost equal delight did I receive the three or 
four following publications of the same author." Coleridge also 
addressed a " Sonnet to Bowles," opening 

*' My heart hath thanked thee, Bowles ! for those soft strains, 
That on the still air floating tremblingly, 
Wak'd in me Fancy, Love, and Sympathy ! " 

P. 212. John Bull. Croker's John Bull was a scurrilous news- 
paper edited by Theodore Hook, the first number of which appeared 
December 17, 1820. 

Mr. Croker, John Wilson (1780-1857), politician and man of let- 
ters, one of Hazlitt's pet aversions, and the same who comes in for 
such a severe chastisement in Macaulay's review of his edition of 
Boswell's "Johnson." 

Junius, the mysterious author of a famous series of political 
letters which appeared in the London Public Advertiser from Janu- 
ary 21, 1769, to January 21, 1772, collected as the "Letters of 
Junius " in 1772. The name of Sir Philip Francis is the one most 
persistently associated with the composition of these letters. 

Godwin, William (1756-1836), leader of the philosophical radi- 
cals in England and a believer in the perfectibility of man, wrote 
"An Enquiry concerning Political Justice" (1793), "Caleb Wil- 
liams" (1794), and other novels and miscellaneous works. Godwin 
was the husband of Mary Wolstonecraft, and the father-in-law of 
Shelley. Hazlitt wrote a sketch of him in the " Spirit of the Age " 
and reviewed his last novel, " Cloudesley," in the Edinburgh Re- 
view. Coleridge has a Sonnet to WiUiam Godwin : 
" Nor will I not thy holy guidance bless. 
And hymn thee, Godwin! with an ardent lay; 



394 Notes 

For that thy voice, in Passion's stormy day 
When wild I roam'd the bleak Heath of Distress, 
Bade the bright form of Justice meet my way — 
And told me that her name was Happiness." 
Sorrows of Werter, a sentimental novel of Goethe's, the work by 
which he was most generally known to English readers in Hazhtt's 
day. 

laugh' d with Rabelais. Cf. Pope's " Dunciad," I, 22 : " Or laugh 
and shake in Rab'lais easy chair." 

spoke with rapture of Raphael. Coleridge had visited Italy in 
1806 on his return from a stay in Malta, and had devoted his time 
there to a study of Italian art. See p. 298 n. 

Giotto (d. 1337), Ghirlandaio, whose real name was Domenico 
Bigardi (1449-1494), and Massaccio (1402-1429) were early Floren- 
tine painters. 

wandered into Germany. Coleridge's visit to Germany and his 
introduction to the leading German philosophers dates back to 

1798-99. 

Kantean philosophy. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the leader 
of modern philosophy. " The writings of the illustrious sage of 
Konigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than 
any other work, at once invigorated and discipHned my under- 
standing. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the 
thoughts ; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance 
of the distinctions ; the adamantine chain of the logic ; and I will 
venture to add — (paradox as it will appear to those who have 
taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and French- 
men) — the clearness and evidence, of the Critique of Pure Reason ; 
and Critique of the Judgment; of the Metaphysical Elements 
of Natural Philosophy ; and of his Religion within the bounds 
of Pure Reason, took possession of me as with a giant's hand. 
After fifteen years' familiarity with them, I still read these and 
all his other productions with undiminished delight and increasing 
admiration." " Biographia Literaria," chap. IX. 

Fichte, J. Gottlieb (1762-1814). " Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, 
or Lore of Ultimate Science, was to add the key-stone of the arch " 
of Kant's system. Ibid. 

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775-1829). ''In Schelling's 
Natur-Philosophie, and the System des Transcendentalen Idealis- 
mus, I first found a genial coincidence with much that I had 
toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had yet 



Notes 395 

to do. . . . Many of the most striking resemblances, indeed all the 
main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my mind 
before I had ever seen a single page of the German Philosopher ; 
and I might indeed affirm with truth, before the most important 
works of Schelling had been written, or at least made public. Nor 
is this coincidence at all to be wondered at. We had studied in 
the same school ; been disciplined by the same preparatory philoso- 
phy, namely, the writings of Kant; we had both equal obligations 
to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano Bruno ; and 
Schelling has lately, and, as of recent acquisition, avowed that same 
affectionate reverence for the labors of Behmen, and other mystics, 
which I had formed at a much earlier period." Ibid. 

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729-1781), German dramatist and 
critic. 

sang for joy. Coleridge had in 1789 composed some stanzas 
" On the Destruction of the Bastille," but these were not published 
till 1834. 

would have floated his bark. Coleridge and Southey with some 
other friends had in 1794 formed a plan for an ideal colony, the 
Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna. 

In Phiiharmonia's. Cf. Coleridge's " Monody on the Death of 
Chatterton," 140 : " O'er peaceful Freedom's undivided dale." 

P. 213. Frailty. Cf. "Hamlet," i, 2, 146: "thy name is woman." 

writing paragraphs. Coleridge was connected with the staff of 
the Courier as a sort of assistant-editor for five months in 181 1. 
His contributions during this period appeared as the " Essays on 
His Own Times " in 1850. 

poet-laureate and stamp-distributor are references respectively 
to Southey and Wordsworth. 

bourne from whence. " Hamlet," iii, i, 79. 

tantalised by useless resources. Compare this with Coleridge's 
own lines of bitter self-reproach addressed " To a Gentleman " : 
" Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain. 
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain." 

P. 214. one splendid passage. The lines beginning " Alas ! they 
had been friends in youth" (408-426). The same passage had 
been singled out for praise by Hazlitt in his lecture " On the Living 
Poets " and in the review of " Christabel " which had appeared in 
the Examiner of June 2, 1816. The authorship of this review has 
been disputed but should on internal evidence, despite its failure 
in appreciation, be ascribed to Hazlitt. See Works, XI, 580-582. 



396 Notes 

Translation of Schiller's JJ^allenstcin, made by Coleridge in 1799- 
1800. 

Remorse. This tragedy was played at the Drury Lane Theatre 
with considerable popular success in 1813. It was a recast of a.i 
early play entitled " Osorio," composed in 1797. 

P. 215. The Friend; a literary, moral, and political weekly paper, 
excluding personal and party pohtics and the events of the day 
(1809-1810), was reissued in one volume in 1812, and with addi- 
tions and alterations (rather a rifacimento than a new edition) in 
1818. 

The sketch in the Spirit of the Age concludes with a con- 
trast between Coleridge and William Godwin. 



MR. SOUTHEY 

This selection forms the conclusion of a sketch of Southey in 
the " Spirit of the Age." It illustrates, even more strikingly than 
the " Character of Burke," Hazlitt's power of dissociating his 
judgments from his prejudices, inasmuch as there had been ex- 
changes of rancorous personalities between the two men. 

P. 216. Like the high leaves. Southey's " The Holly Tree." 

of any poet. In an essay in the " Plain Speaker " " On the Prose 
Style of Poets," Hazlitt elaborates his theory that poets turned 
out inferior prose. " I have but an indifferent opinion of the 
prose-style of poets : not that it is not sometimes good, nay, ex- 
cellent ; but it is never the better, and generally the worse from 
the habit of writing verse." 

full of wise saws. "As You Like It," ii, 7, 156. 

P. 217. historian and prose-translator. Southey wrote the " His- 
tory of Brazil," the " History of the Peninsular War," the " Book 
of the Church," and lives of Wesley, Cowper, and Nelson. He 
translated from the Spanish the romances of " Amadis of Gaul," 
" Palmerin of England," and " The Cid." 

P. 219. Pindaric or Shandean, i.e., whimsical. Pindaric should 
of course be understood as a reference to Peter Pindar, the name 
under which John Wolcot (1738-1819) wrote his coarse and 
whimsical satires. Hazlitt mentions him at the end of his lectures 
" On the Comic Writers " : " The bard in whom the nation and the 
king delighted, is old and blind, but still merry and wise : — remem- 
bering how he has made the world laugh in his time, and not re- 



Notes 397 

penting of the mirth he has given ; with an involuntary smile 
lighted up at the mad pranks of his Muse, and the lucky hits of 
his pen." Shandean is derived from Sterne's novel, " Tristram 
Shandy." 

And follows so. " Henry V," iv, i, 293. 

his political inconsistency. This is the subject of Hazlitt's 
attacks on Southey. See " Political Essays " (Works, III, 109-120, 
192-232). 

ELIA 

The last essay in the " Spirit of the Age " is entitled " Elia and 
Geoffrey Crayon." An edition published at Paris by Galignani in 
1825 omits the account of Washington Irving, and this text, as it is 
in all respects unexceptionable, has been here adopted for the sake 
of coherence. In a letter to Bernard Barton, February 10, 1825, 
Lamb refers to Hazlitt's sketch : " He has laid too many colours on 
my likeness, but I have had so much injustice done me in my own 
name, that I make a rule of accepting as much over-measure to 
' Elia ' as Gentlemen think proper to bestow." 

P. 221. shuMe off. " Hamlet," iii, i, 67. 

The self -applauding bird. Cowper's " Truth," 58. 

P. 222. New-horn gauds and give to dust. " Troilus and Cres- 
sida," iii, 3, 176-79. 

do not in broad rumor lie, and the two following quotations are 
free renderings of " Lycidas," 78-82. 

Mr. Lamb rather affects. Hazlitt had Lamb in his eye when he 
described the Occult School in the essay "On Criticism" ("Table 
Talk ") : " There is another race of critics who might be designated as 
the Occult School — vere adepti. They discern no beauties but what 
are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvi- 
ous to the vulgar part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation 
of styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold — 
and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone than most 
others. If an author is utterly unreadable, they can read him for 
ever : his intricacies are their delight, his mysteries are their study. 
They prefer Sir Thomas Brown to the Rambler by Dr. Johnson, 
and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy to all the writers of the 
Georgian Age. They judge of works of genius as misers do of hid 
treasure — it is of no value unless they have it all to themselves. 
They will no more share a book than a mistress with a friend. If 



398 Notes 

they suspected their favourite volumes of dehghting any eyes but 
their own, they would immediately discard them from the list. 
Theirs are superannuated beauties that every one else has left oflf 
intriguing with, bed-ridden hags, a ' stud of night-mares.' This 
is not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to singu- 
larity, a love of what is odd and out of the way. They must come 
at their pleasures with difficulty, and support admiration by an un- 
easy sense of ridicule and opposition. They despise those qualities 
in a work which are cheap and obvious. They like a monopoly 
of taste, and are shocked at the prostitution of intellect implied 
in popular productions. In like manner, they would chuse a friend 
or recommend a mistress for gross defects ; and tolerate the sweet- 
ness of an actress's voice only for the ugliness of her face. Pure 
pleasures are in their judgment cloying and insipid — 

'An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet!' 
Nothing goes down with them but what is caviare to the multitude. 
They are eaters of olives and readers of black-letter. Yet they 
smack of genius, and would be worth any money, were it only for 
the rarity of the thing ! " 

P. 223. fine fretwork. " Essays of Elia," " The South-Sea House." 

the chimes at midnight. 2 " Henry IV," iii, 2, 228. 

P. 224. cheese and pippins. Ibid., v, 3. 

inns and courts of law. " The Old Benchers of the Inner 
Temple," in " Essays of Elia." 

a certain writer. Hazlitt himself. It is known to everybody that 
the friendship of Lamb for Hazlitt suffered certain strains, and 
various attempts have been made to guess at the provocations. 
Mutual recriminations in regard to literary borrowings have been 
thought to be responsible for more than one breach. So Mr. 
Bertram Dobell, in his " Sidelights on Lamb," 212-14, imagines 
that the mystery is solved in a letter of Hazlitt's to the editor of 
the London Magazine (April 12, 1820) charging Lamb with ap- 
propriating his ideas: "Do you keep the Past and Future? You 
see Lamb argues the same view of the subject. That 'young 
master ' will anticipate all my discoveries if I don't mind." The 
similarity of idea between Hazlitt's " Past and Future " and Lamb's 
" New Year's Eve," and the appearance in Lamb's essay of the 
phrase " young masters " makes it clear enough what Hazlitt is 
referring to, but that either man should have taken the matter 
very seriously is hard to believe. It is easier to look upon Hazlitt''^ 
expression as banter of the same kind that Lamb allowed himself!^ 



Notes 399 

in connection with the essay on " Guy Faux " alluded to in the 
present sketch. This subject had been proposed by Lamb, as we 
are informed in "Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen," 
and had been written up by Hazhtt in the Examiner in 1821 (Works, 
XI, 317-334). Two years later Lamb contributed a paper on 
! the same subject to the London Magazine, founded partly on an 
essay in the Reflector (1811), entitled "On the Probable Effects 
of the Gunpowder Treason." The essay in the London Magazine 
(Lamb's W^orks, ed. Lucas, I, 236 ff.) opens with a facetious thrust 
at Hazlitt : " A very ingenious and subtle writer, whom there is 
good reason for suspecting to be an ex-Jesuit, not unknown at 
Douay some five-and-twenty years since (he will not obtrude him- 
self at M — th again in a hurry), about a twelvemonth back, set 
himself to prove the character of the Powder Plot conspirators 
to have been that of heroic self-devotedness and true Christian 
martyrdom. Under the mask of Protestant candour, he actually 
gained admission for his treatise into a London weekly paper, 
not particularly distinguished for its zeal towards either religion. 
But, admitting Catholic principles, his arguments are shrewd and 
incontrovertible. [Then follows a quotation from Hazlitt setting 
forth the Catholic standpoint.] It is impossible, upon Catholic prin- 
ciples, not to admit the force of this reasoning; we can only not 
help smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of the gulled 
editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola for the very quintessence 
of sublimated reason in England at the commencement of the nine- 
teenth century. We will just, as a contrast, show what we Protes- 
tants (who are a party concerned) thought upon the same subject, 
at a period rather nearer to the heroic project in question." This 
is the kind of resentment we would expect Lamb to show at the 
appropriation of his ideas. That there were not wanting grounds 
for real grievance against Hazlitt may be gathered from a letter to 
Wordsworth, September 23, 1816 (Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 
491) : "There was a cut at me a few months back by the same 
hand. ... It was a pretty compendium of observation, which 
the author has collected in my disparagement, from some hundred 
of social evenings which we had spent together, — however in spite 

of all, there is something tough in my attachment to H which 

these violent strainings cannot quite dislocate or sever asunder. I get 
no- conversation in London that is absolutely worth attending to but 
his." To one of his quarrels with Lamb Hazlitt owes the finest 
vvy'mpliment he ever received, and happily it marks the termination 



400 ' Notes 

of all differences between them. It occurs in the well-known 
" Letter of Elia to Robert Southey " which Lamb pubHshed in the 
London Magazine when Southey reproached him with his friend- 
ship for HazHtt (Works, I, 233) : " I stood well with him for 
fifteen years (the proudest of my life), and have ever spoke my 
full mind of him to some, to whom his panegyric must naturally 
be least tasteful. I never in thought swerved from him, I never be- 
trayed him, I never slackened in my admiration for him, I was the 
same to him (neither better nor worse) though he could not see it, as 
in the days when he thought fit to trust me. At this instant, he may 
be preparing for me some compliment, above my deserts, as he has 
sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for which I 
rest his debtor ; or, for any thing I know, or can guess to the con- 
trary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. He 
is welcome to them (as he was to my humble hearth), if they can 
divert a spleen, or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would 
not quarrel with the world at the rate he does ; but the reconcilia- 
tion must be effected by himself, and I despair of living to see that 
day. But, protesting against much that he has written, and some 
things he chooses to do ; judging him by his conversation which I 
enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by his books, in those 
places where no clouding passion intervenes — I should belie my 
own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his 
natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits 
breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy, which 
was betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years 
to have preserved it entire ; and I think I shall go to my grave 
without finding, or expecting to find, such another compan- 
ion." 

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was published in 1621. Its 
quaint prose was often imitated by Lamb and had a direct effect 
on his style. 

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), physician and essayist, author 
of " Religio Medici" (1642), " Pseudodoxia Epidemica " (1646), 
and " Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial" (1658). 

Fullef^s Worthies. The " History of the Worthies of England " 
(1662) is the best known work of Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an 
English divine and writer on church history. 

does not make him despise Pope. See p. 322. 

Parnell, Thomas (1679-1717). In the sixth lecture on the 
" Enghsh Poets " Hazlitt says : " Parnell, though a good-natured, 



Notes 401 

easy man, and a friend to poets and the Muses, was himself little 
more than an occasional versifier." 

Gay, John (1685-1732), is best known by his "Beggar's Opera" 
(1728) and "Fables" (1727 and 1738). Hazlitt writes of Gay in 
the sixth lecture on the " English Poets " and has a paper on " The 
Beggar's Opera " in the " Round Table." 

His taste in French and German. Cf. " On Old English Writers 
and Speakers " in the " Plain Speaker " : " Mr. Lamb has lately taken 
it into his head to read St. Evremont, and works of that stamp. 
I neither praise nor blame him for it. He observed, that St. Ev- 
remont was a writer half-way between Montaigne and Voltaire, 
with a spice of the wit of the one and the sense of the other. I 
said I was always of the opinion that there had been a great many 
clever people in the world, both in France and England, but I had 
been sometimes rebuked for it. Lamb took this as a slight re- 
proach ; for he had been a little exclusive and national in his 
tastes." 

P. 225. His admiration of Hogarth. See note to p. 158. 

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian painter, sculptor, architect. 

fine Titian head. Hazlitt painted a portrait of Lamb in the cos- 
tume of a Venetian senator. This portrait now hangs in the Na- 
tional Gallery. 

P. 226. to have coined. Cf. " Julius Caesar," iv, 3, 72: "I had 
rather coin my heart. And drop my blood for drachmas." 

Mr. Waithman, Robert (1764-1833), was Lord Mayor in 1823. 

Rosamond Gray, a tale, was published in 1798 and "John Wood- 
vill," a tragedy, in 1802. The lines in the footnote are from the 
second act of " John Woodvill." 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

This selection forms the latter half of the sketch of Scott in 
the " Spirit of the Age." The following dialogue between Northcote 
and Hazlitt, " Conversations of Northcote," XVI, represents Haz- 
litt's feelings for Scott: " N. 'You don't know him, do you? He'd 
be a pattern to you. Oh ! he has a very fine manner. You would 
learn to rub off some of your asperities. But you admire him, I be- 
lieve.' H. 'Yes; on this side of idolatry and Toryism.' N. 'That is 
your prejudice.' H. ' Nay, it rather shows my liberality, if I am a 
devoted enthusiast notwithstanding. There are two things I admire 



402 Notes 

in Sir Walter, his capacity and his simpHcity ; which indeed I am apt 
to think are much the same.' " 

P. 227. more lively. Cf. " Coriolanus," iv, 5, 237 : " it's spritely, 
waking, audible, and full of vent." 

their habits. " Hamlet," iii, 4, 135. 

P. 228, Baron of Bradwardine and the others mentioned in this 
sentence appear in " Waverley." 

Paul Veronese (1528-1588), a painter of the Venetian school. 

Balfour of Burley and the others in this sentence appear in 
" Old Mortahty." The quotation is from chapter 38. 

Meg Merilees to Dominie Sampson, in " Guy Mannering." 

P. 229. her head to the east. Cf. "Guy Mannering," chap. 15: 
" Na, na ! not that way, the feet to the east." 

Rob Roy to Die Vernon, in '' Rob Roy." 

thick coming. Cf . " Macbeth," v, 3, 38 : " thick-coming fancies." 

Earl of Glenallan, in " The Antiquary." 

Black Dwarf to Grace Armstrong, in the " Black Dwarf." 

Children of the Mist, in " Legend of Montrose." 

Amy (Robsart) and Varney, in " Kenilworth." 

George of Douglas, in " The Abbot." 

P. 229, n. the finest scene. " Guy Mannering," chap. 51. 

P. 231. a consummation. " Hamlet," iii, i, 63. 

by referring to the authentic history. At this point Hazlitt re- 
produces in a footnote one of Scott's historical quotations in " Ivan- 
hoe." 

Hints and dungs. See " Ivanhoe," chap. 43. 

P. 232. calls backing, i " Henry IV," ii, 4, 165. 

Mr. Mac Adam, John Loudon (1756-1836). 

Sixty years since. The sub-title of " Waverley " was " 'Tis Sixty 
Years Since." 

Wickliff, John (c. 1320-1384), an important English forerunner 
of the Protestant Reformation, the first translator of the Bible 
into English. 

Luther, Martin (1483-1546), led the first successful revolt against 
the authority of the Cathohc Church. 

Hampden, John (c. 1595-1643), an English patriot who by his 
refusal to pay ship-money precipitated the rebellion against Charles 
I which ended in the beheading of that monarch. 

Sidney, Algernon (1622-1683), an English patriot who fought on 
the side of Parliament against Charles I, and who, in the reign of 
Charles II, was tried for treason by Jeffreys, the hanging judge, and 



Notes 403 

condemned to execution without proof. Sidney is the author of 
" Discourses Concerning Government " in which he vindicates the 
right of resistance to the misrule of kings. 

Somers, John (1651-1716), took an important part in bringing 
about the bloodless Revolution which drove James II from England 
in 1688. 

P. 233. Red Reiver, in " The Black Dwarf." 

Claverhouse, in " Old Mortality." 

Tristan the Hermit and Petit Andre, in " Quentin Durward." 

but himself. Though Scott composed many of his own mottoes, 
he never quoted his own previous verse but pretended to be using 
an Old Play or an Old Poem. 

P. 234. born for the universe. Goldsmith's "Retaliation," 31. 

winked and shut. Marston's " Antonio's Revenge," Prologue. 

P. 235. Who would not grieve. Cf. Pope's " Prologue to the 
Satires," 213 : 

"Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? 
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?" 



LORD BYRON 

From the " Spirit of the Age." Discussions of Byron's poetry 
are also to be found in the review of " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage " 
(Works, XI, 420-426) and in " Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles" 
(XI, 486-508). 

P. 236. As if a man. " Coriolanus," v, 3, 36. 

cloud-capt. "Tempest," iv, i, 152. 

P. 237. prouder than. Cf. Shakespeare's " Troilus and Cressida," 
i, 3, 380: "His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends." . 

silly sooth. " Twelfth Night," ii, 4, 47. 

P. 239. denotes a foregone conclusion. " Othello," iii, 3, 428. 

P. 240. in cell monastic. Cf. " As You Like It," iii, 2, 441 : " To 
live in a nook merely monastic." 

P. 241. thoughts that breathe. Gray's "Progress of Poesy," no. 

P. 242. Lord Byron does not exhibit a new view of nature. In 
the paper on " Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles," Hazlitt's tone 
is more generous : " His Lordship likes the poetry, the imaginative 
part of art, and so do we. . . . He likes the sombre part of it, 
the thoughtful, the decayed, the ideal, the spectral shadow of hu- 
man greatness, the departed spirit of human power. He sympathizes 



404 Notes 

not with art as a display of ingenuity, as the triumph of vanity or 
luxury, as it is connected with the idiot, superficial, petty self- 
complacency of the individual and the moment (these are to him 
not 'luscious as locusts, but bitter as coloquintida ') ; but he sym- 
pathizes with the triumphs of Time and Fate over the proudest 
works of man — with the crumbling monuments of human glory — 
with the dim vestiges and countless generations of men — with that 
which claims alliance with the grave, or kindred with the elements 
of nature." Works, XI, 496. 

poor men's cottages. "Merchant of Venice," i, 2, 14. 

reasons high. " Paradise Lost," II, 558. 

P. 243. Till Contemplation. Dyer's " Grongar Hill," 26. 

this hank. " Macbeth," i, 7, 6. 

P. 244. The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South, a quar- 
terly published in Italy by Leigh Hunt and Byron, 1822-23, to 
which Hazlitt also contributed. In the second of its four numbers 
appeared Byron's " Heaven and Earth : A Mystery." 

the deluge, in " Heaven and Earth." 

his aversion. See "Don Juan," III, stanza 94: 

" A drowsy frowzy poem, called the Excursion, 
Writ in a manner which is my aversion." 

horn in a garret. In the " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," 
Byron, speaking of Jeffrey, refers to " the sixteenth story, where 
himself was born." 

Letter to the Editor. The Letter to William Roberts, editor of 
the British Review, appeared in the first number of the Liberal. 

Long's, a restaurant in Bond Street. 

P. 245, the controversy about Pope. See note to p. 118. 

Scrub, in Farquhar's " Beaux' Stratagem." 

very tolerable. " Much Ado About Nothing," iii, 3, 2)7- 

P. 246. a chartered libertine. " Henry V," i, i, 48. 

P. 247. Like proud seas. " Two Noble Kinsmen," ii, 2, 23. 

Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation? Scott wrote 
to Byron's publisher, John Murray, December 17, 1821 : " I accept 
with feelings of great obligation, the flattering proposal of Lord 
Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and tremendous 
drama of ' Cain.' I may be partial to it, and you will allow I have 
cause; but I do not think that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a 
flight amid her former soarings." 

Farthest from them. " Paradise Lost," I, 247. 

P. 248. the first Vision' of Judgment, the one composed by 



Notes 405 

Southey on the occasion of the death of George III, celebrating 
that monarch's entry into heaven and provoking a spirited travesty 
from Byron. 

None but itself. This Hne is quoted by Burke in the " Letters 
on a Regicide Peace," from' a play written or adapted by Lewis 
Theobald, "The Double Falsehood" (1727). Waller-Glover. 
the tenth transmitter. Richard Savage's " The Bastard." 
P. 250. Nothing can cover. Beaumont and Fletcher's "The False 
One," ii, i. 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 
This is the first of the " Lectures on the English Poets." 

P. 251. spreads its sweet leaves. " Romeo and Juliet," i, i, 158. 

P. 252, the stuff. " Tempest," iv, i, 156. 

mere oblivion. " As You Like It," ii, 7, 166. 

man's life. " King Lear," ii, 4, 270. 

P. 253. There is warrant. "Richard III," i, 4, 112. 

such seething brains. " Midsummer Night's Dream," v, i, 4. 

Angelica and Medoro. Characters in " Orlando Furioso." 

P. 254. which ecstacy is very cunning in. " Hamlet," iii, 4, 138. 

Poetry, according to Lord Bacon. Cf. Bacon's " Advancement 
of Learning," Book II : " Because true Historie representeth Actions 
and Euents more ordinarie and lesse interchanged, therefore Poesie 
endueth them with more Rarenesse and more vnexpected and 
alternatiue Variations : So as it appeareth that Poesie serueth and 
conferreth to Magnanimitie, Moralitie, and to delectation. And 
therefore it was euer thought to haue some participation of 
diuinesse, because it doth raise and erect the Minde, by sub- 
mitting the shewes of things to the desires of the Mind, whereas 
reason doth buckle and bowe the Mind unto the Nature of 
things." 

P. 255. Our eyes are made the fools. " Macbeth," ii, i, 44. 

That if it would. " Midsummer Night's Dream," v, i, 19. 

The Home o' th' taper. " Cymbeline," ii, 2, 19. 

P. 256. for they are old. Cf. " Lear," ii, 4, 194. 

Nothing but his unkind daughters. Cf. "King Lear," iii, 4, 72: 
" Nothing could have subdued nature 
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters." 

P. 257. The little dogs. Ibid., iii, 6, 65. 



4o6 Notes 

So I am. Ibid., iv, 7, 70. 

O now, for ever. " Othello," iii, 3, 347. 

Never, lago. Ibid., iii, 3, 453. 

P. 258. But there. Ibid., iv, 2, 57. 

To Z?^ discarded thence! The first edition at this point adds: 
" This is like that fine stroke of pathos in ' Paradise Lost,' where 
Milton makes Adam say to Eve, 

' Should God create another Eve, and I 
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee 
Would never from my heart ! ' " 

Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual 
part of our nature. Cf. " On People of Sense " in " Plain Speaker " : 
" Poetry acts by sympathy with nature, that is, with the natural 
impulses, customs, and imaginations of men, and is, on that account, 
always popular, delightful, and at the same time instructive. It is 
nature moralizing and idealizing for us ; inasmuch as, by shewing 
us things as they are, it implicitly teaches us what they ought to be ; 
and the grosser feelings, by passing through the strainers of this 
imaginary, wide-extended experience, acquire an involuntary tend- 
ency to higher objects. Shakspeare was, in this sense, not only 
one of the greatest poets, but one of the greatest moralists that 
we have. Those who read him are the happier, better, and wiser 
for it." 

Moore, Edward (1712-1757), author of "The Gamester" (1753), 

P. 259. As Mr. Burke observes, in " A Philosophical Enquiry into 
the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful," Part I, 
Section 15 : " Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime 
and affecting tragedy we have; appoint the most favourite actors; 
spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations ; unite the greatest 
efforts of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have collected 
your audience, just at the moment when their minds are erect with 
expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of high rank 
is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square; in a 
moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the com- 
parative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph 
of the real sympathy." 

Masterless passion. Cf. " Merchant of Venice," iv, i, 51 : " For 
affection. Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood," etc. 

P. 260. satisfaction to the thought. " Othello," iii, 3, 97. 

Now night descending. See p. 128. 

Throw him. Collins's " Ode to Fear." 



Notes 407 

Ingratitude. Cf . " King Lear," i, 4, 281 : " More hideous, when 
thou show'st thee in a child." 

P. 261. both at the first. " Hamlet," iii, 2, 23. 

P. 262. And visions. Hazlitt uses this quotation in his paper on 
" Wordsworth's Excursion " in the " Round Table " with the change 
of poetic to prophetic. '* This couplet occurs in a letter from Gray 
to Walpole ('Letters,' ed. Tovey I, 7-8). The lines are apparently 
a translation by Gray of Virgil, ' .5ineid,' VI, 282-84." Waller- 
Glover, XII, 504. 

P. 263. Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Thomas Chalmers (1780- 
1847), a celebrated divine and preacher of Scotland, published in 
1817 "A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, Viewed 
in Connection with Modern Astronomy." 

bandit fierce. Milton's " Comus," 426. 

our fell of hair. " Macbeth," v, 5, 11. 

Macbeth . . . for the sake of the music. Some copies of the first 
edition misprint Macheath, the name of the leading character in 
Gay's " Beggar's Opera." In writing " On Commonplace Critics," 
in the " Round Table," Hazlitt represents the commonplace critic as 
questioning whether any one of Shakespeare's plays, "if brought 
out now for the first time, would succeed. He thinks that ' Mac- 
beth ' would be the most likely, from the music which has been 
introduced into it." The reference is to the music written for 
D'Avenant's version of the play, produced in 1672. According to 
Waller-Glover (I, 436), "this music, traditionally assigned to 
Matthew Locke, is now attributed to Purcell " ; but Furness, in the 
Variorum edition of " Macbeth," accepts the conclusion of Chap- 
pell in Grove's " Dictionary of Music," " that Purcell could not 
have been the composer of a work which appeared when he was 
in his fourteenth year," especially as " the only reason that can be 
assigned why modern musicians should have doubted Locke's au- 
thorship is that a manuscript of it exists in the handwriting of 
Henry Purcell." 

P. 264. Between the acting. " Julius Caesar," ii, i, 63. 

P. 265. Thoughts that voluntary move. " Paradise Lost," III, 37. 

the words of Mercury. Cf. " Love's Labour's Lost," v, 2, 940 : 
" The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo." 

So from the ground. " Faerie Queene," I, vi, 13. 

P. 266. the secret [hidden] soul. Milton's " L' Allegro." 

P. 267. the golden cadences. " Love's Labour's Lost," iv, 2, 126. 

Sailing with supreme dominion. Gray's " Progress of Poesy," 



4o8 Notes 

sounding always. See p. 207 and n. 

except poets. Cf. " On the Prose Style of Poets " in the " Plain 
Speaker " : " What is a little extraordinary, there is a want of 
rhythmus and cadence in what they write without the help of 
metrical rules. Like persons who have been accustomed to sing to 
music, they are at a loss in the absence of the habitual accompani- 
ment and guide to their judgment. Their style halts, totters, is 
loose, disjointed, and without expressive pauses or rapid move- 
ments. The measured cadence and regular sing-song of rhyme or 
blank verse have destroyed, as it were, their natural ear for the 
mere characteristic harmony which ought to subsist between the 
sound and the sense. I should almost guess the Author of Waver- 
ley to be a writer of ambling verses from the desultory vacillation 
and want of firmness in the march of his style. There is neither 
momentum nor elasticity in it; I mean as to the score, or effect upon 
the ear. He has improved since in his other works : to be sure, he 
has had practice enough. Poets either get into this incoherent, 
undetermined, shuffling style, made up of ' unpleasing flats and 
sharps,' of unaccountable starts and pauses, of doubtful odds and 
ends, flirted about like straws in a gust of wind ; or, to avoid it and 
steady themselves, mount into a sustained and measured prose (like 
the translation of Ossian's Poems, or some parts of Shaftesbury's 
Characteristics) which is more odious still, and as bad as being 
at sea in a calm." Hazlitt's views on this question are peculiar, 
though his examples are well chosen. The more common opinion 
is that voiced by Coleridge in his remarks " On Style " : " It is, in- 
deed, worthy of remark that all our great poets have been good 
prose writers, as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton; and this probably arose 
from their just sense of metre. For a true poet will never confound 
verse and prose; whereas it is almost characteristic of indifferent 
prose writers that they should be constantly slipping into scraps of 
metre." Works, IV, 342. 

P. 268. Addison's Campaign (1705), written in honor of Marl- 
borough's victory at Blenheim, was described as " that gazette in 
rhyme" by Joseph Warton (1722-1800) in his "Essay on the 
Writings and Genius of Pope," I, 29. 

Chaucer. Cf. A. W. Pollard's " Chaucer," p. 35 : " To Boccaccio's 
' Teseide ' and ' Filostrato,' he was indebted for something more 
than the groundwork of two of his most important poems ; and he 
was also acquainted with three of his works in Latin prose. If, 
as is somewhat hardily maintained, he also knew the Decamerone, 



Notes 409 

and took from it, in however improved a fashion, the idea of his 
Canterbury Pilgrimage and the plots of any or all of the four 
tales (besides that of Grisilde) to which resemblances have been 
traced in his own work, his obligations to Boccaccio become im- 
mense. Yet he never mentions his name, and it has been con- 
tended that he was himself unaware of the authorship of the poems 
and treatises to which he was so greatly indebted." 

Dryden. His translations from Boccaccio are " Sigismonda and 
Guiscardo," " Theodore and Honoria," " Cymon and Iphigenia." 

P. 269. married to immortal verse. " L' Allegro." 

John Biinyan (1628-1688), author of " Pilgrim's Progress" (1678). 

Daniel Defoe (c. 1659-1731), journalist and novelist. His mas- 
terpiece, " Robinson Crusoe," appeared in 1719. 

dipped in dews. Cf. T. Heywood's " Ben Jonson, though his 
learned pen Was dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben." 

Philoctetes. The story of the Greek hero who, on the voyage to the 
siege of Troy, was abandoned on an uninhabited island, is the sub- 
ject of a play by Sophocles. 

As I walked about. " Robinson Crusoe," Part I, p. 125 (ed. G. A. 
Aitken). 

P. 270. give an echo. "Twelfth Night," ii, 4, 21, 

P. 271. Our poesy. " Timon of Athens," i, i, 21. 

P. 272. all plumed. Cf. i " Henry IV," iv, i, 98 : 

" All plumed like estridges that with the wind 
Baited like eagles having lately bathed ; 
Glittering in golden coats, like images ; 
As full of spirits as the month of May, 
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer ; 
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls." 

// we fly. Psalms, cxxxix, 9. 

P. 275. Pope Anastatius. "Inferno," xi, 8. 

Count Ugolino. Ibid., xxxiii. 

Ossian. James Macpherson (1736-1796) published between 1760 
and 1765 what he alleged to be a translation of the ancient Gaelic 
hero-bard, Oisin or Ossian. The poems fed the romantic appetite 
of the generation and were translated into practically every Euro- 
pean language. In Germany especially the influence of " Ossian " 
wrought powerfully through the enthusiasm it aroused in the young 
Goethe and in Schiller. In England, the poems, immediately upon 
their appearance, gave rise to a long controversy as to their au- 
thenticity, Dr. Johnson being among the first to attack the belief 



4IO Notes 

in their antiquity. The truth seems to be that, though there really 
is a legendary hero answering to Ossian, no such poems as Macpher- 
son attributed to him were ever transmitted. The whole work is to 
all intents the original creation of Macpherson himself. The sup- 
posed Gaelic originals, which were published by the Highland So- 
ciety of London in 1807, have been proved by philologists to be 
spurious, to be nothing in fact but translations into bad Gaelic from 
Macpherson's good English. This conclusion is further supported 
by the mass of borrowings from the Bible and the classics which 
have been found in "Ossian." See J. C. Smart: "James Macpher- 
son, An Episode in Literature" (1905). 

P. 276. lamentation of Selma. Lament of Colma in " Songs of 
Selma," Ossian, ed. William Sharp, p. 410. 

Roll on. Cf. ibid., p. 417: "ye bring no joy on your course! 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 

[The identification of quotations has been omitted for this essay 
in order to allow students an opportunity to try it for themselves.] 

The third and fourth paragraphs of this essay had appeared in 
a letter of Hazlitt's to the Examiner (Works, III, 152). The entire 
essay was first pubhshed in the third number of the Liberal (see 
note to p. 244). 

P. 277. IV — m, Wem. 

P. 281. Murillo (1617-1682) and Velasquez (1599-1660) are the 
two greatest Spanish painters. 

nothing — like what he has done. In the essay "On Depth and 
Superficiality" ("Plain Speaker"), HazHtt characterizes Coleridge 
as " a great but useless thinker." 

P. 282. Adam Smith . (1723-1790), founder of the science of 
political economy, author of "The Wealth of Nations" (1776). 

huge folios. In the essay "On Pedantry" ("Round Table") 
Hazlitt writes : " In the library of the family where we were brought 
up, stood the Fratres Poloni; and we can never forget or describe 
the feeling with which not only their appearance, but the names 
of the authors on the outside inspired us. Pripscovius, we remem- 
ber, was one of the easiest to pronounce. The gravity of the con- 
tents seemed in proportion to the weight of the volumes ; the im- 
portance of the subjects increased with our ignorance of them." 



Notes 411 

P. 283, n. Hazlitt's father was the author of " Discourses for the 
Use of FamiHes on the Advantages of a Free Enquiry and on the 
Study of the Scriptures" (1790) and of "Sermons for the Use of 
Families" in two volumes (1808). 

P. 284. Mary Wolstonecraft (1759-1797), author of the "Vindica- 
tion of the Rights of Woman" (1792). 

Mackintosh, Sir James (1765-1832), wrote " Vindicise Gallicae, a 
Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers against 
the Accusations of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke." Hazlitt writes 
of Mackintosh in the " Spirit of the Age " as " one of the ablest and 
most accomplished men of the age, both as a writer, a speaker, and 
a converser," and comparing him with Coleridge, he remarks, " They 
have nearly an equal range of reading and of topics of conversa- 
tion; but in the mind of the one we see nothing but fixtures, in 
the other every thing is fluid." 

Tom Wedgwood (1771-1805) was an associate of some of the 
literary men of his day. 

P. 285. Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809), actor, dramatist, novelist, 
a member of Godwin's group of radicals. His chief writings are 
"The Road to Ruin" (1792), "Anna St. Ives" (1792), and 
"Hugh Trevor" (1794-97). Holcroft's "Memoirs," written by 
himself, were edited and completed by Hazlitt and published in 
1816 (Works, H). 

P. 286. Hume, David (1711-1776), historian and sceptic philoso- 
pher, described by Hazlitt as " one of the subtlest and most meta- 
physical of all metaphysicians." His chief writings are " A Treatise 
on Human Nature, being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental 
Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects" (1739-40), "Philo- 
sophical Essays" (1748), "Four Dissertations" (1757). 

P. 287. Essay on Vision. Hazlitt calls this "the greatest by far 
of all his works and the most complete example of elaborate 
analytical reasoning and particular induction joined together that 
perhaps ever existed." (Works, XI, 108). 

Tom Paine (1737-1809), an influential revolutionary writer, au- 
thor of "Common Sense" (1776), a pamphlet advocating Ameri- 
can independence, "Rights of Man" (1791), a reply to Burke's 
" Reflections on the French Revolution," and " The Age of Reason " 
(179s). He also took an active part in both the American and 
French revolutions. 

prefer the unknown to the known. Cf. the first essay " On the 
Conversation of Authors " ; " Coleridge withholds his tribute of 



412 Notes 

applause from every person, in whom any mortal but himself can 
descry the least glimpse of understanding. He would be thought to 
look farther into a millstone than any body else. He would have 
others see with his eyes, and take their opinions from him on 
trust, in spite of their senses. The more obscure and defective 
the indications of merit, the greater his sagacity and candour in 
being the first to point them out. He looks upon what he nick- 
names a man of genius, but as the breath of his nostrils, and the 
clay in the potter's hands. If any such inert, unconscious mass, 
under the fostering care of the modern Prometheus, is kindled into 
life, — begins to see, speak, and move, so as to attract the notice of 
other people, — our jealous patroniser of latent worth in that case 
throws aside, scorns, and hates his own handy-work ; and deserts 
his intellectual offspring from the moment they can go alone and 
shift for themselves." 

a discovery on the same subject. Hazlitt's first publication, " On 
the Principles of Human Action." 

P. 288. / sat down to the task, etc. Cf. " On Application to 
Study" ("Plain Speaker") : "K what I write at present is worth 
nothing, at least it costs me nothing. But it cost me a great deal 
twenty years ago. I have added little to my stock since then, and 
taken little from it. I 'unfold the book and volume of the brain,' 
and transcribe the characters I see there as mechanically as any 
one might copy the letters in a sampler. I do not say they came 
there mechanically — I transfer them to the paper mechanically." 
See also p. 345- 

P. 289. which . . . he has somewhere told himself. " Biographia 
Literaria," ch. 10. 

that other Vision- of Judgment. Byron's. 

Bridge-Street Junto. "The Constitutional Association or, as it 
was called by its opponents, ' The Bridge Street Gang,' founded in 
1821 ' to support the laws for suppressing seditious publications, 
and for defending the country from the fatal influence of disloyalty 
and sedition.' The Association was an ill-conducted party organisa- 
tion and created so much opposition by its imprudent prosecutions 
that it very soon disappeared. See an article in the Edinburgh 
Review for June, 1822." Waller-Glover, VI, 487. 

P. 290. at Tewkesbury. In the essay " On Going a Journey," 
Hazlitt refers to this episode as occurring at Bridgewater : " I re- 
member sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, 
which I picked up at an inn in Bridgewater, after being drenched 



Notes 413 

in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two 
volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla." 

Paul and Virginia (1788), a sentimental novel by Bernardin St. 
Pierre (1737-1814). 

P. 291. Camilla (1796), a novel by Fanny Burney (1752-1840). 

a friend of the poet's. " This is a mistake. Wordsworth paid 
i23 a year for Alfoxden. The agreement is given in Mrs. Henry 
Sandford's ' Thomas Poole and His Friends,' I, 225." Waller- 
Glover. 

P. 292. In the outset of life. Alongside of this paragraph should 
be read the essay " On the Feeling of Immortahty in Youth," 
Works, XH, 150. 

P. 294. Chantrey, Sir Francis (1781-1842). His bust of Words- 
worth is now at Cole-Orton. 

Haydon, Benjamin Robert (1786-1846), a celebrated English 
painter who was intimate with many literary men. In the picture 
referred to Haydon also introduced a portrait of Hazlitt. 

Monk Lewis. Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818) wrote among 
other things a sensational novel, "The Monk" (1795), which 
gained him his nickname. " The Castle Spectre " was originally 
produced at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1797. 

P. 295. Tom Poole (1765-1837), friend and patron of Cole- 
ridge. 

P. 296. Sir Walter Scott's, etc. Probably a reference to the 
banquet given to George IV by the Magistrates of Edinburgh and 
attended by Scott, August 24, 1822. 

Blackwood, William (1776-1834), the Edinburgh publisher. 

Caspar Poussin (1613-1675). His real name was Dughet, but he 
changed it out of respect to his brother-in-law, Nicholas Poussin. 

Domenichino or Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), a painter of 
Bologna. 

P. 297. Death of Abel (1758), an idyllic-pastoral poem by Solomon 
Gessner (1730-1788), a German poet of the Swiss school who en- 
joyed a wide popularity in the eighteenth century. 

P. 298. since the days of Henry II. As Henry II lived in the 
twelfth century, and as neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth ever 
refer to the language of Henry II as their standard, the statement 
in the text may probably be considered as a blunder of Hazlitt's. 

He spoke with contempt of Cray and with intolerance of Pope. 
Cf. " Biographia Literaria," ch. 2: "I felt almost as if I had been 
newly couched, when, by Mr. Wordsworth's conversation, I had 



414 Notes 

been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray's cele- 
brated Elegy. I had long before detected the defects in The 
Bard; but the Elegy I had considered as proof against all fair 
attacks ; and to this day I can not read either without delight, and a 
portion of enthusiasm. At all events whatever pleasure I may have 
lost by the clearer perception of the faults in certain passages, has 
been more than repaid to me by the additional delight with which 
I read the remainder." In his " Table Talk," October 23, 1833, 
Coleridge says again: "I think there is something very majestic in 
Gray's Installation Ode; but as to the Bard and the rest of his 
lyrics, I must say I think them frigid and artificial." Of Pope 
and his followers he writes (" Biographia Literaria," ch. i) : "I 
was not blind to the merits of this school, yet, as from inexperience 
of the world, and consequent want of sympathy with the general 
subjects of these poems, they gave me little pleasure, I doubtless 
undervalued the kind, and with the presumption of youth withheld 
from its masters the legitimate name of poets. I saw that the 
excellence of this kind consisted in just and acute observations on 
men and manners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and 
substance, and in the logic of wit, conveyed in smooth and strong 
epigrammatic couplets, as its form; that even when the subject was 
addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in the Rape of the 
Lock;, or the Essay on Man ; nay, when it was a consecutive 
narration, as in that astonishing product of matchless talent and 
ingenuity. Pope's Translation of the Iliad ; still a point was looked 
for at the end of each second line, and the whole was, as it were, a 
sorites, or, if I may exchange a logical for a grammatical metaphor, 
a conjunction disjunctive, of epigrams. Meantime, the matter and 
diction seemed to me characterized not so much by poetic thoughts, 
as by thoughts translated into the language of poetry." 

he thought little of Junius as a writer. Cf. Coleridge's " Table 
Talk," July 3, 1833 : " The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law 
of which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. When he gets out of 
his aphorismic metre into a sentence of five or six lines long, noth- 
ing can exceed the slovenliness of the English." 

dislike for Dr. Johnson. Cf. " Table Talk," July 4, 1833 : " Dr. 
Johnson's fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impos- 
sible not to be amused with such a book. But his bow-wow manner 
must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced. . . . 
As to Burke's testimony to Johnson's powers, you must remember 
that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and 



Notes 415 

wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking 
than in writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life." 

opinion of Burke. Cf. " Table Talk," April 8, 1833 : " Burke was 
indeed a great man. No one ever read history so philosophically as 
he seems to have done. . . . He would have been more influential 
if he had less surpassed his contemporaries, as Fox and Pitt, men of 
much inferior minds, in all respects." 

He liked Richardson, but not Fielding. On this subject Coleridge 
evidently changed his mind. Cf. " Table Talk," July 5, 1834: " What 
a ^master of composition Fielding was ! Upon my word, I think 
the CEdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three 
most perfect plots ever planned. And how charming, how whole- 
some, Fielding always is ! To take him up after Richardson 
is like emerging from a sickroom heated by stoves into an open 
lawn on a breezy day in May." 

Caleb Williams, the chief novel of William Godwin. 

P. 298, n. He had no idea of pictures. See p. 212. 

Btiffamalco. Cristofani Buonamico (1262-1351), also known as 
Buffalmacco, a painter of Florence. 

P. 300. Elliston, Robert William (i 774-1813), actor and later man- 
ager of the Drury Lane Theatre. 

still continues. See p. 224 and n. 

^ ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS 

This is the title of Essays HI and IV of the " Plain Speaker." 
Our selection begins with the last paragraph of the first, which 
forms a fitting introduction to the account of one of Lamb's cele- 
brated Wednesday evenings. Lamb tells us that his sister was accus- 
tomed to read this essay with unmixed delight. 

P. 301. When Greek meets Greek. Nathaniel Lee's " Alexander 
the Great," iv, 2. 

C . Coleridge. 

P. 302. small-coal man. Thomas Britton (i654?-i7i4), a dealer 
in small coal, who on the floor of his hut above the coal-shop held 
weekly concerts of vocal and instrumental music, at which the 
greatest performers of the day, even Handel, were to be heard. 

And, in our -flowing cups. Cf. " Henry V," iv, 3, 51 : 
" then shall our names 
Familiar in his mouth as household words . . . 
Be in their flowing cups freely remember'd." 



41 6 Notes 

P. 303. the cartoons. See Hazlitt's account of Raphael's cartoons 
in "The Pictures at Hampton Court" (Works, IX, 43). 

Donne, John (1573-1631), poet and divine. Hazlitt in the "Lec- 
tures on the EngHsh Poets " confesses that he knows nothing of 
him save " some beautiful verses to his wife, dissuading her from 
accompanying him on his travels abroad (see p. 318), and some 
quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel." V, 83. 

P. 304. Ned P . Edward Phillips. Lamb speaks of him as 

" that poor card-playing Phillips, that has felt himself for so many 
years the outcast of Fortune." (Works, ed. Lucas, VII, 972.) 

Captain . Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750-1821), brother 

of Fanny Burney the novelist, author of a " Chronological His- 
tory of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific 
Ocean" in five volumes (1803-1817,). "The captain was himself 
a character, a fine, noble creature — gentle, with a rough exterior, 
as became the associate of Captain Cook in his voyages round 
the world, and the literary historian of all these acts of circumnavi- 
gation." Crabb-Robinson's Diary, 1810. 

Jem White. James White (1775-1820), of whom Lamb has left 
us a sketch in the essay " On the Praise of Chimney-Sweepers " : 
" He carried away half the fun of the world when he died." He 
wrote, it is supposed with some cooperation from Lamb, the 
" Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends " 
(1796), which were described by Lamb as "without exception the 
best imitations I ever saw." (Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 2.) A review 
of this book by Lamb, consisting chiefly of specimens, appeared in 
the Examiner in 1819 (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 191 ff.). 

turning like the latter end. This phrase occurs in one of the 
extracts in Lamb's review of Falstaff's Letters just mentioned 
(p. 194). 

A . William Aryton (1777-1858), a musical critic and director 

of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket. In the letter of Elia 
to Robert Southey (Lamb's Works, I, 230) he is spoken of as "the 
last and steadiest left me of that little knot of whist-players, that 
used to assemble weekly, for so many years, at the Queen's Gate." 

Mrs. R . Mrs. Reynolds, who had been Lamb's school- 
mistress. 

M. B. Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney. " Mar- 
tin Burney is as odd as ever. . . . He came down here, and 
insisted on reading Virgil's ' Eneid ' all through with me (which 



Notes 417 

he did,) because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time he 
read out ail the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations 
are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A third time, he would 
carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favoredly, because ' we did not 
know how indispensable it was for a Barrister to do all those sort 
of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than 
we supposed.' So he goes on, harassing about the way to pros- 
perity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat wrong one — 
harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He 
deserves one — : may be, he has tired him out." Lamb's Works, VII, 

855. 

Author of the Road to Ruin. Thomas Holcroft. 

P. 305. Critique of Pure Reason, by Kant. 

Biographia Literaria. Coleridge's account of his literary life, 
published in 1817. 

Those days are over! The event here referred to may be 
Waterloo. Mr. Lucas thinks that Hazlitt's share in Lamb's gath- 
erings " ceased after an unfortunate discussion of Fanny Burney's 
Wanderer, which Hazlitt condemned in terms that her brother, the 
Admiral, could not forgive." (Lamb's Works, I, 482.) It is likely 
that Mr. Lucas has been led astray by the statement in Crabb- 
Robinson's Diary to the effect that Hazlitt used to attend Captain 
Burney's whist-parties " till he affronted the Captain by severe 
criticisms on the works of his sister," presumably by his article in 
the Edinburgh Review in 1814. Hazlitt commemorates Lamb's even- 
ings in the " Pleasure of Hating " (" Plain Speaker ") : " What is be- 
come of ' that set of whist players,' celebrated by Elia in his notable 
Epistle to Robert Southey, Esq. . . . ' that for so many years 
called Admiral Burney friend?' They are scattered, like last year's 
snow. Some of them are dead — or gone to live at a distance — or 
pass one another in the street Hke strangers; or if they stop to 
speak, do it as coolly and try to cut one another as soon as pos- 
sible. Some of us have grown rich — others poor. Some have got 
places under Government — others a niche in the Quarterly Review. 
Some of us have dearly earned a name in the world ; whilst others 
remain in their original privacy. We despise the one, and envy and 
are glad to mortify the other." 

Like angels' visits. Cf . Blair's " The Grave," 582 : " Like those 
of angels, short and far between." Hazlitt was fond of pointing 
out this source for Campbell's famous line " Like angels' visits few 
and far between," and of ins'sting that the alteration spoiled the 



41 8 Notes 

sense. Thereby he is said to have incurred Campbell's bitter 
hostility. 

P. 306. Mr. Douce, Francis (1757-1834), Shakespearian scholar 
and keeper of the manuscripts in the British Museum. 

L. H . Leigh Hunt. There is a sketch of him in the " Spirit 

of the Age." 

aliquando siMaminandus erat. " He sometimes had to be 
checked." This is a quotation from Seneca which Ben Jonson in 
"Timber" (ed. Schelling, p. 23) had applied to Shakespeare. 

P. 307. The Indicator. Leigh Hunt's most successful series of 
essays, which began their run in 1819. 

Mr. Northcote, James (i 746-1831), the painter of whose talk 
Hazlitt has left an entertaining record in the " Conversations of 
James Northcote" (1830), a book which inspired Crabb-Robinson 
to say, " I do not believe that Boswell gives so much good talk in an 
equal quantity of his life of Johnson." 

P. 308. Sir Joshua's. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the 
famous English painter. 

P. 309. Home Tooke (1736-1812), politician and author of a 
celebrated philological volume, "The Diversions of Purley " (1786, 
1805). His portrait* is included in the "Spirit of the Age": "He 
was without a rival (almost) in private conversation, an expert 
public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate grammarian, and the 
finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own party. He had no 
imagination (or he would not have scorned it!) — no delicacy of 
taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments : his intellect was 
like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot sharp-pointed 
poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies in public." 

hear a sound so fine. J. S. Knowles's " Virginius," v, 2. 

P. 310. silenced a learned professor. Cf. " Spirit of the Age " : 
" He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the 
Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wishing to know the meaning of 
the common copulative. Is." 

Curran, John Philpot (1750-1817), member of Parliament from 
Ireland, orator and wit. 

P. 311. Mrs. Inchhald, Elizabeth (1753-1821), a well-known actress, 
dramatist, and novelist. In literature she is associated with the 
group of William Godwin, and her best-known works are " A 
Simple Story " and " Nature and Art." 

from noon to dewy eve. " Paradise Lost," I, 743. 

Mrs. M . Mrs. Montagu, wife of Basil Montagu. In the 



Notes 419 

"Pleasure of Hating" ("Plain Speaker") there is another allusion 
to Mrs. Montagu " whose dark raven locks made a picturesque 
background to our discourse." 

H — t's. Leigh Hunt's. 

N — 's. Northcote's. 

H — yd — ns. Haydon's. 

Doctor Troiichin. Theodore Tronchin, a physician of Geneva, 
figures in Rousseau's " Confessions." 

P. 312. Sir Fopliiig Flutter, a character in George Etherege's 
comedy, •' The Man of Mode." 

For wit is like a rest. " Master Francis Beaumont's Letter to 
Ben Jonson." For players read gamesters. 

came down into the country. Charles and Mary Lamb with a 
few of their friends paid a visit to Hazlitt at Winterslow in 1810. 

Like the most capricious poet. " As You Like It," iii, 3, 8. 

walked gowned. Lamb's " Sonnet Written at Cambridge, August 
15, 1819." 

P. 313. the person I mean. George Dyer (1755-1841), an amiable 
hack-writer and a friend of Lamb. He figures prominently in two 
of the Essays of Elia, " Oxford in the Vacation " and " Amicus 
Redivivus," and in many of Lamb's letters. " To G. D. a poem is 
a poem. His own as good as any bodie's, and god bless him, any 
bodie's as good as his own, for I do not think he has the most 
distant guess of the possibility of one poem being better than 
another. The Gods by denying him the very faculty itself of dis- 
crimination have effectually cut off every seed of envy in his 
bosom." Letter to Wordsworth (Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 
519). 



OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 

This, like the preceding essay, is a record of one of Lamb's 
Wednesday evenings. It was originally published in the New 
Monthly Magazine for January, 1826, from which the present text 
is reproduced. It was republished by Hazlitt's son in " Literary 
Remains" (1836) and "Winterslow" (1850). 

P. 315. Come like shadows. "Macbeth," iv, i, iii. 

B . Lamb. The name is supplied in " Literary Remains." 

defence of Guy Faux. See p. 224 and n. 

Never so sure. Pope's " Moral Essays," II, 51. 



420 Notes 

A . William Ayrton. 

?. 316. in his habit. " Hamlet," iii, 4, 135. 

P. 317. And call up him. " II Penseroso," 109. 

wished that mankind. Browne's " Religio Medici," Part II, sec- 
tion 9. 

Prologues spoken. See Prologue to Fulke Greville's tragedy of 
" Alaham." 

P. 318. old edition. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt suggests that it is the edi- 
tion of 1609 of which Lamb owned a copy. " Memoirs of Hazlitt," 
I, 276. 

Here lies. " An Epithalamion on the Lady Elizabeth and Count 
Palatine." Muses' Library, I, 86. 

By our first strange. " Elegy on his Mistress," I, 139. 

P. 320. lisped in numbers. Pope's " Prologue to Satires," 128. 

His meeting with Petrarch. Chaucer was in Italy in 1372-3, but 
his meeting with Petrarch is only a matter of conjecture. He 
probably did not meet Boccaccio, the author of the " Decame- 
ron." 

Ugolino. See p. 275. 

portrait of Ariosto. Hazlitt probably refers to the Portrait of 
a Poet in the National Gallery, now ascribed to Palma. 

P. 321. the mighty dead. Thomson's " Winter," 432. 

creature of the element. Cf. " Comus," 299: 

" Of some gay creatures of the element, 
That in the colors of the rainbow live, 
And play i' the plighted clouds." 

That was Arion. " Faerie Queene," IV, ix, 23. 

For Captain C, M. C, Miss D , " Literary Remains " supplies 

Admiral Burney, Martin Burney, Miss Reynolds. 

with lack-luster eye. " As You Like It," ii, 7, 21. 

P. ^22. his compliments. See p. 129. 

P. 2>^2>- But why then publish. " Prologue to Satires," 135. 

Gay's verses. "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece" (ed. Muses' 
Library, I, 207). 

P. 324. E . In " Literary Remains " the name supplied is 

Erasmus Phillips, probably a mistake for Edward Phillips. 

nigh-sphered in heaven. Collins's " Ode on the Poetical Char- 
acter," 66. 

Garrick, David (171 7-1779), the celebrated actor. 

/. F . According to " Literary Remains," Barron Field (1786- 

1846), Lamb's friend and correspondent. 



Notes 421 

Handel, George Frederick (1685-1759), the musical composer, 
German by birth but naturalized in England. 

P. 325. Wildair, in Farquhar's comedy " Sir Harry Wildair." 

Ahel Drugger, in Ben Jonson's " Alchemist," was one of Gar- 
rick's famous parts. 

P. 326, author of Mustapha. Fulke Greville. 

Kit Marlowe (1564-1593), the most brilliant writer of tragedy 
before Shakespeare. He wrote " Tamburlaine the Great," " The 
Tragical History of Dr. Faustus," " The Jew of Malta," and " Ed- 
ward the Second." In the " Age of Elizabeth " Hazlitt says of him, 
"There is a lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst 
after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by 
any thing but its own energies." 

Webster, John, wrote during the first quarter of the seventeenth 
century. His chief plays are " The White Devil " and the 
"Duchess of Malfy." Dekker, Thomas (c. 1570-1641). "The 
Shoemaker's Holiday," " The Honest Whore," and " Old Fortu- 
natus " are his best plays. In the third lecture of the " Age of 
Elizabeth " Hazlitt thus compares Webster and Dekker : " Webster 
would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius than Deckar, if he had 
the same originality; and perhaps is so, even without it. His 
White Devil and Duchess of Malfy, upon the whole perhaps, 
come the nearest to Shakspeare of anything we have upon record ; 
the only drawback to them, the only shade of imputation that 
can be thrown upon them, ' by which they lose some colour,' is, 
that they are too like Shakspeare, and often direct imitations of 
him, both in general conception and individual expression. . . . 
Deckar has, I think, more truth of character, more instinctive depth 
of sentiment, more of the unconscious simplicity of nature ; but he 
does not, out of his own stores, clothe his subject with the same 
richness of imagination, or the same glowing colours of language. 
Deckar excels in giving expression to certain habitual, deeply-rooted 
feelings, which remain pretty much the same in all circumstances, 
the simple uncompounded elements of nature and passion : — Web- 
ster gives more scope to their various combinations and changeable 
aspects, brings them into dramatic play by contrast and comparison, 
flings them into a state of fusion by a kindled fancy, makes them 
describe a wider arc of oscillation from the impulse of unbridled 
passion, and carries both terror and pity to a more painful and 
sometimes unwarrantable excess. Deckar is content with the 
historic picture of suffering; Webster goes on to suggest horrible 



422 Notes 

imaginings. The pathos of the one tells home and for itself; the 
other adorns his sentiments with some image of tender or awful 
beauty. In a word, Deckar is more like Chaucer or Boccac- 
cio ; as Webster's mind appears to have been cast more in the 
mould of Shakespeare's, as well naturally as from studious emula- 
tion." 

Heywood, Thomas (d. c. 1650), a prolific dramatist who excelled 
in the homely vein. His best-known play is " The Woman Killed 
with Kindness." 

Beaumont, Francis (1584-1616), and Fletcher, John (1579-1625), 
composed their dramas in collaboration. In the " Age of Elizabeth " 
Hazlitt calls them lyric and descriptive poets of the first order, 
but as regards drama " the first writers who in some measure de- 
parted from the genuine tragic style of the age of Shakspeare. 
They thought less of their subject, and more of themselves, than 
some others. They had a great and unquestioned command over 
the stores both of fancy and passion ; but they availed themselves 
too often of commonplace extravagances and theatrical trick. . . . 
The example of preceding or contemporary writers had given them 
facility; the frequency of dramatic exhibition had advanced the 
popular taste; and this facihty of production, and the necessity for 
appealing to popular applause, tended to vitiate their own taste, 
and to make them willing to pamper that of the public for novelty 
and extraordinary effect. There wants something of the sincerity 
and modesty of the older writers. They do not wait nature's 
time, or work out her materials patiently and faithfully, but try to 
anticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. They would have a 
catastrophe in every scene ; so, that you have none at last : they 
would raise admiration to its height in every line ; so that the im- 
pression of the whole is comparatively loose and desultory. They 
pitch the characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust them- 
selves by the eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find 
all the prodigality of youth, the confidence inspired by success, 
an enthusiasm bordering on extravagance, richness running riot, 
beauty dissolving in its own sweetness. They are like heirs just 
come to their estates, like lovers in the honeymoon. In the economy 
of nature's gifts, they ' misuse the bounteous Pan, and thank the 
Gods amiss.' Their productions shoot up in haste, but bear the 
marks of precocity and premature decay. Or they are two goodly 
trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, and 
with the verdure springing at their feet; but they do not strike 



Notes 423 

their roots far enough into the ground, and the fruit can hardly 
ripen for the flowers ! " 

Jonson, Ben (1573-1637), was the originator of the "comedy of 
humors." Hazhtt, in discussing him at length in the second lecture 
on the " Comic Writers," confesses a disrelish for his style. " He 
was a great man in himself, but one cannot readily sympathise with 
him. His works, as the characteristic productions of an individual 
mind, or as records of the manners of a particular age, cannot be 
valued too highly ; but they have little charm for the mere general 
reader. Schlegel observes, that whereas Shakspeare gives the 
springs of human nature, which are always the same, or suffi- 
ciently so to be interesting and intelligible; Jonson chiefly gives 
the humours of men, as connected with certain arbitrary and con- 
ventional modes of dress, action, and expression, which are in- 
telligible only while they last, and not very interesting at any time. 
Shakspeare's characters are men ; Ben Jonson's are more like ma- 
chines, governed by mere routine, or by the convenience of the 
poet, whose property they are. . . . His portraits are caricatures 
by dint of their very likeness, being extravagant tautologies of 
themselves ; as his plots are improbable by an excess of consistency ; 
for he goes thoroughstitch with whatever he takes in hand, makes 
one contrivance answer all purposes, and every obstacle give way 
to a predetermined theory. . . . Old Ben was of a scholastic 
turn and had dealt a little in the occult sciences and controversial 
divinity. He was a man of strong crabbed sense, retentive memory, 
acute observation, great fidelity of description and keeping in char- 
acter, a power of working out an idea so as to make it painfully 
true and oppressive, and with great honesty and manliness of feel- 
ing, as well as directness of understanding: but with all this, he 
wanted, to my thinking, that genial spirit of enjoyment and finer 
fancy, which constitute the essence of poetry and wit. . . . There 
was nothing spontaneous, no impulse or ease about his genius : it 
was all forced, up-hill work, making a toil of pleasure. And hence 
his overweening admiration of his own works, from the effort they 
had cost him, and the apprehension that they were not proportion- 
ably admired by others, who knew nothing of the pangs and throes 
of his Muse in child-bearing." Works, VHI, 39-41. Of Ben Jon- 
son's tragedies Hazlitt held a higher opinion than of his comedies. 
" The richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross and rub- 
bish we have. . . . His tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, 
is more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and dis- 



424 Notes 

agreeable. His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than 
with ilHterate and vulgar gabble ; his learning engrafted on romantic 
tradition or classical history, looks like genius. . . . His tragedy 
of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular, is an admirable piece of 
ancient mosaic. . . . The depth of ' knowledge and gravity of 
expression sustain one another throughout : the poet has worked 
out the historian's outline, so that the vices and passions, the am- 
bition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisonous 
atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described 
in fuller or more glowing colours." Works, V, 262-3. 
a vast species alone. Cowley's " The Praise of Pindar." 

G . Godwin, according to " Literary Remains." 

Drummond of Hawthoniden. William Drummond (i 585-1649), 
the poet who recorded his conversation with Ben Jonson on the 
occasion of a visit paid to him by the latter in 1618. " He has not 
done himself or Jonson any credit by his account of their conver- 
sation," says Hazlitt in the " Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth." 
Works, V, 299. 

Eugene Aram was hanged in 1759 for a murder he had com- 
mitted several years earlier. 

Admirable Crichfon. James Crichton (i56o?-i582), a Scotchman 
of noble birth who, in a brief life, gained the reputation of universal 
genius and concerning whose powers many legends arose. 

P. 327. H . Hunt, according to " Literary Remains." 

Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679), the English philosopher. His 
chief work is "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a 
Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil" (1651). Hazlitt vindi- 
cated the superiority of Hobbes as a thinker at a time when his 
fame was overshadowed by other reputations. He calls him the 
founder of the modern material philosophy and maintains that 
" the true reason of the fate which this author's writings met with 
was that his views of things were too original and comprehensive 
to be immediately understood, without passing through the hands 
of several successive generations of commentators and interpreters. 
Ignorance of another's meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and 
fear produces hatred." Works, XI, 25-48. 

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). In writing "On the Tendency 
of Sects " in the " Round Table," Hazlitt had alluded to Edwards as 
an Englishman and had spoken of his work on the Will as 
" written with as much power of logic, and more in the true spirit 
of philosophy, than any other metaphysical work in the language." 



Notes 425 

P. 327, n. Lord Bacon, Francis (1561-1626), statesman, scientist, 
and man of letters. His chief works are the "Essays" (1597), the 
"Advancement of Learning" (1604), "Novum Organum " (1620), 
"History of Henry VH " (1622). 

P. 328. Diigald Stewart (1753-1828), Scotch philosopher. 

Duchess of Bolton. Lavinia Fenton (1708-1760), the original 
Polly in Gay's " Beggar's Opera," married the Duke of Bolton in 

1751- 

P. 329. Raphael, Sanzio (1483-1520), the greatest of all the Italian 
painters. 

Lucretia Borgia with calm golden locks. This sounds like a 
striking anticipation of Lander's fine line, " Calm hair meandering 
in pellucid gold " in his poem " On Lucretia Borgia's Hair." Or had 
Hazlitt seen the poem before it was published? 

Michael Angelo (1475-1564), poet, painter, architect, and sculptor, 
the most famous of the great Italian artists. 

Correggio (1494-1534), Giorgione (1477-1510), Guido (i575- 
1642), Cimabue (1240-1302), Vandyke (1599-1641). The other 
painters are mentioned elsewhere in this volume. 

whose names on earth. In his review of Sismondi's " Literature 
of the South" (Works, X, 62) Hazlitt cites among the proofs of 
Dante's poetic power " his description of the poets and great men 
of antiquity, whom he represents ' serene and smiling,' though in 
the shades of death, ' because on earth their names in fame's eternal 
records shine for aye.' " As these lines have not been located in 
Dante, they have been ascribed to the lying memory of Lamb, from 
whose lips Hazlitt learned them. 

P. 330. M7's. Hutchinson, Lucy (b. 1620), whose life of her Puri- 
tan husband, Colonel Hutchinson, had appeared in 1806, presum- 
ably shortly before the conversation recorded in this essay. 

one in the room. Mary Lamb, the sister of the essayist. 

Ninon de Lenclos (1615-1705), for a long time the leader of 
fashion in Paris and the patroness of poets. 

Voltaire (1694-1778), the sceptical philosopher of the Enlighten- 
ment; Rabelais (1490-1553), the greatest French humorist, author 
of " Gargantua and Pantagruel " ; Moliere (1622-1673), the master of 
French comedy; Racine (1639-1699), the master of French classic 
tragedy; La Fontaine (1621-1695), author of the "Fables"; La 
Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), celebrated for his book of cynical 
"Maxims," which Hazlitt imitated in his "Characteristics"; St. 
Evremont (1610-1703), a critic. 



4^6 Notes 

P. 331. Your most exquisite reason. Cf. " Twelfth Night," ii, 3, 
155. 

Oh, ever right. " Coriolanus," ii, i, 208. 

H . This speech is attributed to Lamb in " Literary Remains," 

but wrongly so according to Waller and Glover " because, in the 
first place, the speech seems more characteristic of Hunt than of 
Lamb, and, secondly, because the volume of the New Monthly in 
which the essay appeared contains a list of errata in which two 
corrections (one of them relating to initials) are made in the 
essay and yet this ' H ' is left uncorrected." 

ON READING OLD BOOKS 

This essay was first published in the London Magazine for 
February, 1821, and republished in the " Plain Speaker." 

P- 333- I hate to read new hooks. It would take too long to 
recall all the passages in which Hazlitt voices his sentimental at- 
tachment to the writers with whom he first became acquainted. 
" The greatest pleasure in life," he says in one essay, " is that of 
reading when we are young," and at the conclusion of his lectures 
on the" Ageof EHzabeth "he remarks: " Were I to live much longer 
than I have any chance of doing, the books which I read when I 
was young, I can never forget." Patmore's statement concerning 
Hazlitt's later reading may be exaggerated, but it is interesting 
in this connection : " I do not beheve Hazlitt ever read the half of 
any work that he reviewed — not even the Scotch novels, of which 
he read more than of any other modern productions, and has written 
better perhaps, than any other of their critics. I am certain that 
of many works that he has reviewed, and of many writers whose 
general pretensions he has estimated better than anybody else has 
done, he never read one tithe." " My Friends and Acquaintances," 
III, 122. 

Tales of my Landlord. Scott's. 

Lady Morgan (i783?-i859), a writer of Irish stories, of which 
the best-known is "The Wild Irish Girl" (1806). She is also the 
author of certain miscellaneous productions, among which is a 
"Life of Salvator Rosa" reviewed by Hazlitt for the Edinburgh 
Review, July, 1824. Works, X, 276-310. 

Anastatius, an Eastern romance by Thomas Hope (1770-1831). 

Delphine (1802), a novel by Madame De Stael (1766-1817), the 
celebrated French bluestocking. 



Notes 427 

in their newest gloss. " Macbeth," i, 7, 34. 

Andrew Millar (1707-1768), the pubhsher of Thomson's and 
Fielding's works. 

Thurloe's State Papers. "A Collection of State Papers" (1742) 
by John Thurloe (1616-1668), Secretary of State under Cromwell. 

Sir Godfrey Kneller (1648-1723), a portrait painter of German 
birth whose work and reputation belong to England. 

P- 335- for thoughts. Cf. " Hamlet," iv, 5, 175 : " There's 
rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there 
is pansies, that's for thoughts." 

Fortunatus's Wishing Cap, in Dekker's play of " Old Fortunatus." 

Bruscambille. " Tristram Shandy," Bk. Ill, ch. 35. 

the masquerade. "Tom Jones," Bk. XIII, ch. 7. 

the disputes. Bk. Ill, ch. 3. 

the escape of Molly. Bk. IV, ch. 8. 

Sophia and her muff. Bk. V, ch. 4. 

her aunt's lecture. Bk. VII, ch. 3. 

the puppets dallying. " Hamlet," iii, 2, 257. 

P- 336. ignorance was bliss. Gray's " Ode on a Distant Prospect 
of Eton." 

Ballantyne press. The printing firm of John and James Ballan- 
tyne in Edinburgh with which Scott was associated, and in whose 
financial ruin he was so disastrously involved. 

Minerva Press. The sponsor of popular romances. 

P. ^2,7- Mrs. Radcliffe, Anne (i 764-1823), a very popular writer 
of novels in which romance, sentiment, and terror are combined 
in cunning proportions. Her chief novels are " The Romance of the 
Forest" (1791), "The Mysteries of Udolpho " (i794) and "The 
Italian" (1797). Hazlitt writes of her in the lecture "On the 
English Novelists." 

sweet in the mouth. Revelation, x, g. 

gay creatures. " Comus," 299. 

Tom Jones discovers Square. Bk. V, ch. 5. 

where Parson Adams. "Joseph Andrews," Bk. IV, ch. 14. 

P. 338. Chubb's Tracts. Thomas Chubb (1679-1747), a tallow- 
chandler who devoted his leisure hours to the deistic controversy. 
His " Tracts and Posthumous Works " were published in six 
volumes in 1754. 

fate, free-will. " Paradise Lost," II, 560. 

Would I had never seen. Marlowe's " Dr. Faustus," Scene 19. 

P- 339- -^^w Eloise. "Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloise " (1760), a 



428 Notes 

novel by the great French sentimentahst, Jean Jacques Rousseau 
(1712-1778), who was the most powerful personal force in the 
revolutionary movement of the eighteenth century and whose writ- 
ings have left a deep impression on the pohtical and educational 
systems of the nineteenth. His other, important works are " The 
Social Contract" and " Emile " (1762) and the "Confessions" 
(1782). Hazlitt has a "Character of Rousseau" in the "Round 
Table " (see p. xliv, n.)- 

scattered like stray-gifts. Wordsworth's " Stray Pleasures." 

Sir Fopling Flutter, in Sir George Etherege's comedy " The Man 
of Mode" (1676). 

P- 339, n. a friend. Charles Lamb. 

P. 340. leurre de dupe, a decoy. The expression occurs in the 
fourth book of Rousseau's " Confessions." 

a load to sink a navy. " Henry VHI," iii, 2, 383. 

Marcian Colonna is a dainty hook. Lamb's " Sonnet to the 
Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall." 

P. 341. Keats. Hazhtt shared the popular conception of Keats as 
an effeminate poet. He concludes the essay " On Effeminacy of 
Character " in "Table Talk" with a reference to Keats: "I cannot 
help thinking that the fault of Mr. Keats's poems was a deficiency 
in masculine energy of style. He had beauty, tenderness, delicacy, 
in an uncommon degree, but there was a want of strength and sub- 
stance. His Endymion is a very delightful description of the 
illusions of a youthful imagination, given up to airy dreams — we 
have flowers, clouds, rainbows, moonlight, all sweet sounds and 
smells, and Oreads and Dryads flitting by — but there is nothing 
tangible in it, nothing marked or palpable — we have none of the 
hardy spirit or rigid forms of antiquity. He painted his own 
thoughts and character; and did not transport himself into the 
fabulous and heroic ages. There is a want of action, of char- 
acter, and so far, of imagination, but there is exquisite fancy. All 
is soft and fleshy, without bone or muscle. We see in him the 
youth, without the manhood of poetry. His genius breathed 
'vernal delight and joy.' — 'Like Maia's son he stood and shook his 
plumes,' with fragrance filled. His mind was redolent of spring. 
He had not the fierceness of summer, nor the richness of autumn, 
and winter he seemed not to have known, till he felt the icy hand 
of death ! " Again in the introduction to the " Select British 
Poets" (Works, V, 378), he says that Keats "gave the greatest 
promise of genius of any poet of his day. He displayed extreme 



Notes 429 

tenderness, beauty, originality, and delicacy of fancy; all he wanted 
was manly strength and fortitude to reject the temptations of 
singularity in sentiment and expression. Some of his shorter and 
later pieces are, however, as free from faults as they are full of 
beauties." 

Come like shadozvs. "Macbeth," iv, i, iii. 

Tiger-moth's wings and Blushes with blood. Keats's " Eve of St. 
Agnes." 

Words, words. " Hamlet," ii, 2, 194. 

the great preacher. Edward Irving. 

as the hart. Psalms, xlii, i. 

Giving my stock [sum]. "As You Like It," ii, i, 48. 

P. 342. Valentine, Tattle and Prue, characters in Congreve's 
"Love for Love" (1695). 

know my cue. Cf. " Othello," i, 2, 83. 

Intiis et in cute. See p. 163. 

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), the celebrated chemist. 

P. 343. with every trick and line [Vmt and trick]. " All's Well 
That Ends Well," i, i, 107. 

the divine Clementiiia, in Richardson's " Sir Charles Grandison." 

that ligament. Sterne's " Tristram Shandy," Bk. VI, ch. 10. 

story of the hawk. " Decameron," Fifth Day, ninth story. 

at one proud [fell] swoop. " Macbeth," iv, 3, 219. 

P. 344. w.ith all its giddy [dizzy] raptures. Wordsworth's "Tin- 
tern Abbey," 85. 

embalmed with odours. " Paradise Lost," II, 843. 

the German criticism. See p. 112. 

His form. " Paradise Lost," I, 591. 

Falls Hat. Ibid., I, 460. 

P. 345. For Dr. Johnson's and Junius's style. See pp. 147-9, 186, 
190. 

he, like an eagle. " Coriolanus," v, 6, 115. 

An Essay on Marriage. " No such essay by Wordsworth is at 
present known to exist. It would seem either that ' Marriage ' is a 
misprint for some other word, or that Hazlitt was mistaken in the 
subject of the essay referred to by Coleridge. Hazlitt is probably 
recalling a conversation with Coleridge in Shropshire at the be- 
ginning of 1798 (cf. 'My First Acquaintance with Poets'), at 
which time A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (1793) was the 
only notable prose work which Wordsworth had published." Wal- 
ler-Glover. 



430 Notes 

P. 345, 11. Is this the present earlf "James Maitland, eighth 
Earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839), succeeded his father in August, 
1789." Waller-Glover. 

P. 346. worthy of all acceptation, i Timothy, i, 15, 

Clarendon. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), Eng- 
lish statesman and author of the "History of the Rebellion" (1704- 
1707). 

Froissart, Jean (1338-1410), the chronicler of the Hundred 
Years' War. 

Holinshed, Ralph (d. 1580?), author of "Chronicles of England, 
Scotlande, and Irelande" (1578). 

Stowe, John (i525?-i6o5), author of " Englysh Chronicles" 
(1561). 

Thucydides (46o?B.c.-399?), the historian of the Peloponnesian 
War. 

Guicciardini, Francesco (1483-1540), Italian statesman and author 
of a "History of Italy from 1494 to 1532." 

P. 347. The Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, the last work of 
Cervantes (translated into English in 1619) and Galatea, his first 
work (1585). 

another Yarrow. Cf. Wordsworth's "Yarrow Revisited." 



INDEX 



INDEX 



" Academ}^ of Compliments," 8i. 
Addison, Joseph, xxxii, liii, Ivii, 

130, 142, 143, 144, 147, 153, 268, 

303, 328, Z17, 378. 
Adventurer, The, 152, 342, 379. 
^schylus, 48, 71, 209, 278. 
Alcseus, 193. 

" Alexander's Feast," 199. 
Alison, A., xxxvi. 
"A Mad World, My Masters," 

18. 
" Amelia," 160-2. 
Amyot, Jacques, 352. 
'.' Anatomy of Melancholy," 224, 

397, 400. 
" Ancient Mariner," 213, 297. 
" Antony and Cleopatra," liv-lvi, 

39. 361. 
Aquinas, Thomas, 211, 328, 392. 
Aram, Eugene, 326, 424. 
Arbuthnot, John, Ix, 130, 212, 

375- 
Aretine, Peter, 12, 320, 353. 
Ariel, 85-6, 210, 365. 
Ariosto, Lodovico, xliii, 11, 21, 

243, 253, 320, 352. 
Aristophanes, 48. 
Aristophanes of Byzantium, 363. 
Aristotle, xxxiii, 135. 
Arnold, Matthew, Hx. 
" As You Like It." Iv, 58, 363. 
Atherstone, Edwin, xxxvii. 
Ayrton, W., 304, 315-9, 328, 331, 

378, 416. 

Babbitt, Irving, Ixx n. 

Bacon, Francis, xii, xv, liii, i, 

146, 254, z^-j n., 425. 
Bagehot, W., xxxiii, Ixxii. 
Beattie, James, 365. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, Ivi, i, 2, 

226. 326, 346, 422. 
" Beggar's Opera," 71, 263. 



Behmen, Jacob, 211, 392. 
Belleforest, Frangois de, 353. 
Bentham, Jeremy, Iviii. 
Berkeley, George, xii, 210, 287 n., 

-h^y, 338, 390. 

Betterton, T., 141, y/1- 

Bewick, T., 201, 388. 

Bible, 6-11, 264, 271, 272-3, 351. 

Bickerstaff, Isaac, 139, 140, -^IT, 

Birrell, A., Ixxii, Ixxiii. 

Blackstone, Sir William, 157, 
380. 

Blackwood's Magazine, xxv- 
xxvii, xxxvii, Ixxi. 

Blackwood, W., xxvii, 296, 413. 

Blount, Martha, 121, 321, 324, 
374- 

Boccaccio, Giovanni, xliii, 12, 16, 
127, 137, 268, 320, 343, 352, 
408-9, 422. 

Boileau, Nicolas, 124, 374. 

Bolingbroke, Viscount, 127, 129, 
190, 375. 

Borgia, Lucretia, 329. 

Boswell, J., 150-1, 303, 317, 321, 
379, 414- 

Bowles, W. L., xlv, xlvii, 211, 
245, 374, 393- 

Britton, T.. 302, 415. 

" Broken Heart, The," Ivi. 

Brooke, Lord. See Greville, 
Fulke. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, Ixiv, 224, 
316-7, 397, 400. 

Buckingham, Duke of, 130, 375. 

Buffamalco, 298 n., 415. 

Buhver-Lytton, Edward, Ixxii. 

Bunyan, John, 224, 269, 324, 409, 

Burke, Edmund, xii, xiv. liii, Ixvi, 
145 n., 147, 150, 156, 172-90, his 
mental range, 172-3 ; as an ora- 
tor, 173-5 ; subtlety of under- 
standing, 176-8; views on gov- 



433 



434 



Index 



ernment and society, 179-82; 
onesidedness, 182-3; prose 
style, 184-9, 271 n., 345, 384; 
212, 259, 284, 298, 325, 343-5, 

411, 414-5- 

Burleigh, Lord, 21, 356. 

Burney, Fanny, 380, 383, 413, 417. 

Burney, James, 304, 321, 416, 417. 

Burney, Martin, 304, 321, 324, 
328, 416-7. 

Burns, Robert, xxxvi, 7. 

Burton, Robert, 224, 397, 400. 

Butler, Joseph, 210, 287, 299, 
327, 38s, 390. 

Byron, Lord, xi, xxiii, xxvii n., 
xxxvi, xxxvii, xlv, liii, Iviii- 
lix, Ixxi, 197, 203, 216, 236-50, 
his self-centered nature con- 
trasted with Scott's, 236-41 ; 
his intensity, 241-3 ; his ro- 
mances, 242 ; his tragedies, 
243 ; his satire, 244-5 ; his 
serio-comic style, 245-6; his 
extravagance, 246-8 ; aristo- 
cratic pride, 248; death in 
Greece, 249-50; 393. 

" Cain," 247. 

Calamy, Edmund, 211, 391. 

" Caleb Williams," 298. 

" Camilla," 291, 413. 

" Campaign, The," 268, 408. 

Campbell, Thomas, xxxvii, xlv, 

Iviii, 417-8. 
Carlyle, T., xviii n., xxxi, li. 
Cary, H. F., 353. 
Castiglione, B., 12, 353. 
"Catiline," 11. 
Cervantes, Miguel de, xiii, 97, 

157-8, 347, 380, 430. 
Chalmers, T., 263, 407. 
Chantrey, Sir Francis, 294, 413. 
Chapman, G., 2, 4, 11, 352. 
Charron, P.. 136 n., 376. 
Chatham, Lord, 174-5, I77 n., 

188, 383. 
Chatterton, T., 328. 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, liii, Ixxiii, 21, 

32, 34-5, 40-2, 200, 267-8, 319- 

21, 343, 408-9, 422. 



Chester, John, 295-9. 

Chesterton, G. K., xviii, 

" Childe Harold," 242. 

" Christabel," Ivii, 214, 395. 

Chubb, T., 338, 427. 

Gibber, CoUey, 52. 

Cicero, 12, 188-9. 

Cimabue, 329, 33i, 425. 

Cinthio, Giraldi, 353. 

Citizen of the World, 152-3, 379. 

Clarendon, Earl of, 346, 430. 

" Clarissa Harlowe," 168-9, 270. 

Clarke, S., 210, 391. 

Claude of Lorraine, 212, 264, 
298 n., 303, 329. 

Cobbett, W., Ivii, Ixi-lxii, Ixvii. 

Coke, Sir Edward, i, 350. 

Coleridge, S. T., xiii, service to 
EngHsh criticism, xxxviii-xl ; 
xlvii, lii, Hii, liv, Iviii-lix, Ixi, 
Ixiii-lxiv, Ixxi, 205-15, his in- 
tellect, 205-7 ; extent of reading, 
209-12; inactivity, 213; his 
poetry, 213-4; his prose, 214-5; 
compared with Southey, 216-8; 
277-300 ; his preaching, 279-80; 
kindness to Hazlitt, 280, 283, 
286 ; appearance, 281 ; literary 
opinions, 284-8, 298, 413-5; 
conversation, 289, 301 ; manner 
of reading, 292, 295 ; 303, 304-5, 
310, 311, 341, 345, 356, 358, 359, 
362, 3^2,, 2>^7, 368, 369, 371, 374, 
381, 387, 408, 411. 

Collins, W., 200. 

Comedy, 96-8, 371. 

" Comedy of Errors," 1. 

" Comus," 32. 

Congreve, W., 97, 371. 

Connoisseur, The, 152, 342, 379. 

" Coriolarius," 11, 361. 

Corneille, Pierre, 361. 

Cornwall, Barry, xxxvi. 

Correggio, 329, 425. 

" Corsair, The," 242. 

Cotton, C, 138, 376. 

" Count Fathom," 164-5. 

Cowley, A., 138, 377. 

Cowper, W., 109, 211, 297. 

Crabbe, G., xxxvii, Iviii-lix. 



Index 



435 



Crebillon, Claude, 155, 212, 380. 
Crichton, James, " the Admira- 
ble," 326, 424. 
Croker, J. W., 212, 393. 
Croly, George, xxxvii. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 324. 
Cudworth, R., 210, 390. 
Cumberland, R., 365. 
Curran, J. P., 310, 418. 
" Cymbeline," Iv, 50-9. 

Dante, xliii, 12, 48, 112, 114, 200, 

243, 271, 273-5, 320, 353, 425- 
D'Avenant, W., 407. 
Davidson, John, Ixxiii n. 
Davies, Sir John, 21. 
Davy, Sir Humphry, 342, 368, 

429. 
" Death of Abel," 297, 413. 
Defoe, Daniel, liii, 157 n., 269, 

409. 
Dekker, T., Ivi, i, 4, 10, 18, 326, 

421-2. 
De Lolme, J. L., 157, 380. 
" Delphine," 333. 
De Quincey, T., xxxii, Ixvii, 387. 
Dobell, Bertram, 398. 
Domenichino, 296, 413. 
" Don Juan," 245, 246 n. 
Donne, J., 303, 318-9, 416. 
"Don Quixote," 164, 330, 337, 

346, 381. 
Douce, F., 306, 418. 
Drake, Sir Francis, i, 350. 
Drake, Nathan, 17, 354. 
Drummond, William, of Haw- 

thornden, 326, 424. 
Dryden, J., xxxiii, xxxiv, 107, 

127, 200, 268, 303, 323. 
Du Bartas, G., 12, 353. 
Duns Scotus, 211, 328, 392. 
Durfey, Tom, 141, 377. 
Dyer, G., 313, 419. 

Eachard, John, 157, 380. 
Edgeworth, Maria, xxxvi. 
Edinburgh Review, xi, xv, xxxv, 

xxxvi, xxxviii, xlvi, Ixxi, 

Ixxii. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 327, 424. 



Elliston, R. W., 300, 415. 

" Emilius," xlviii, 339-40. 

" English Bards and Scotch Re- 
viewers," 244. 

" Epistle of Eloise to Abelard," 
127. 

'* Essay on Criticism," 124-5. 

" Essay on Laws," xxiii. 

" Essay on the Principles of Hu- 
man Action," xiv, 287, 412. 

Estcourt, R., 141, 377. 

Euripides, 209. 

" Eve of St. Agnes," Iviii. 

" Excursion, The," 198. 

" Faerie Queene," xlvii, xlviii, 

13, 356, 357- 
Fairfax, Edward, 11. 
Farquhar, George, 343. 
Fawcett, J., xii, 385. 
Fichte, J. G., 212, 394. 
Field, Barron, 324, 420. 
Fielding, H., xiii, xlii, Ivii, 156- 

65, 167, 224, 298, 303, 324, 380, 

415. 
Fletcher, John, 4, 16, 17, 354. 
Ford, John, Ivi. 
Foster, John, xxxv n. 
Fox, C. J., 177 n., 188, 298, 385. 
Francis, Sir Philip, 393. 
Friend, The, 215, 396. 
Froissart, Jean, 346, 430. 
Froude, J. A., xxxiii. 
Fuller, T., 224, 346, 400. 
Fuseli, H., 145, 310, 378. 

Garrick, D., 151, 324-5, 420. 
Gay, J., 224, 303, 328, 401. 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 353. 
" George Barnwell," 365. 
Gessner, S., 413. 
Ghirlandaio, 212, 329, 331, 394. 
Gibbon, Edward, xxxv, 224. 
Gifford, W., xxxviii. 
" Gil Bias," 303, 337, 381. 
Giorgione, 329, 425. 
Giotto, 212, 329, 331, 394. 
Godwin, W., xi, xiii, xv, Ixvii, 

212, 226, 284-5, 300, 311, 326, 

383, 393, 396. 



436 



Index 




Goethe, J. W., xiii, 212, 341, 394, 

409. 
Golding, Arthur, 352. 
Goldsmith, OHver, 148, 150, 151, 

152-3, 162, 170, 212, 308, 321, 

325, 342. 
Gosse, E., xliv n. 
Gray, T., 155, 200, 298, 328, 414. 
Greville, Fulke, 210, 316-7, 326, 

390. 
Guardian, The, 145, 378. 
Guicciardini, F., 346, 430. 
Guido, 329, 425- 
" Guy Faux," 224, 231, 315, 331, 

399- 
" Guzman d'Alfarache," 381. 

Halifax, Marquis of, 138, 2)7^- 

"Hamlet," liv, 14, 37-9, 51, 60, 
76-84, 367-8. 

Hampden, John, 232, 402. 

Handel, G. F., 324, 415, 421. 

Harrington, Sir John, 11. 

Hartley, D., 210, 327, 338, 390. 

Hawkesworth, John, 152, 379. 

Haydon, B. F., xxiv, xxvi, xxix, 
294, 311, 413- 

Hazlitt, John, xiii. 

Hazlitt, W., the elder, xii, 277-8, 
281-4, 411., 

Hazlitt, W. In relation to his 
age, xi-xii ; early environment 
and reading, xii-xiii ; interest 
in metaphysics, xiii-xv ; as a 
painter, xiii-xiv; beginnings of 
authorship, xiv ; introduction to 
journalism, xv; as an essayist, 
xvi ff . ; his paradox, xvii-xx ; 
emotional warmth, xx-xxi ; 
outward unhappiness, xxi-xxii ; 
sentim.ent for the past, xxii- 
xxiii ; attachment to political 
principles, xxiii-xxv ; literary- 
political quarrels, xxv-xxix ; 
embittered feelings, xxix-xxxi ; 
Carlyle's judgment, xxxi ; as 
an essayist, xxxii-xxxiii ; as a 
critic, xxxix ff. ; debt to Cole- 
ridge, xxxix-xl and notes 
passim; union of taste and 



judgment, xl-xli ; catholicity 
of taste, xli-xlii ; narrowness 
of reading, xlii-xlv ; general- 
izing power, xlv-xlvi ; his- 
torical viewpoint, xlvi ; limita- 
tions, xlvii; feeling for books, 
xlviii, 426 ; on literature and 
life, xlix ; on " imagination," 
xlix ; on substance and form, 
1 ; on poetry and metre, li ; 
scope of his criticism, lii-liii ; 
iDn Shakespeare, liii-lvi ; on 
Elizabethan dramatists, Ivi ; on 
his contemporaries, Ivii-lix; 
his prose style, lix-lxix ; on dic- 
tion, Ixvi n. ; use of quota- 
tions, Ixix ; influence, Ixix- 
Ixxiii ; his view of English 
character, 19-20; on progress 
in the arts, 262, 358; friendship 
with Lamb, 398-400, 417; meet- 
ing with Coleridge and its ef- 
fects, 277-300. 

Hazlitt, W. C, xiv n. 

" Heaven and Earth," 243. 

Heine, Heinrich, liv, Ixxi. 

Henley, Ernest, xxxiii. 

Henry VI, 365. 

Herford, C. H., xiii n. 

Hesiod, 11. 

Heywood, T., 2, 4, 326, 422. 

Hobbes, T., xii, xv, 327, 338, 424. 

Hoby, T., 353. 

Hogarth, W., 158, 212, 225, 303, 
324, 381. 

Holcroft, T., 285, 300, 304-5, 411, 
417. 

Jiolinshed, Ralph, 15, 346, 353-4, 
430. 

Homer, xlviii, 11, 104, 112, 115, 
119, 189, 193, 253, 268, 270, 
271-2, 272>, 275, 352. 

Hood, Tom, xxxvii. 

Hook, Theodore, 393. 

Hooker, Richard, i, 350. 

Home, R. H., Ixxii. 

Howells, W. D., Ixxi. 

Hume, D., xii, 286-7, 327, 338, 
411. 

" Humphrey Clinker," 164, 385. 



Index 



437 



Hunt, Leigh, xvii, xxvi, xxxii, 
liii, lix, Ixxi, 306-7, 311, 327, 
330-1, 390, 404 418, 426. 

Huss, John, 211, 391. 

Hutchinson, Lucy, 330, 425. 

lago, liv, 42, 72-6, 361, 365. 
Imagination, 34; in Shakespeare, 

45 ; in Milton, 104-5 ; 255-6. 
Tnchbald, Elizabeth, 311, 383, 418. 
Irving, Edward, liii, lix, 341. 
Irving, Washington, 397. 

Jeffrey, Francis, xxxvi-xxxviii, 
xlv, lix, 244, 376, 404. 

Jerome of Prague, 211, 391. 

Jervas, C, 130-1, 375- 

"John Bull," 212, 393. 

"John Buncle," xliv, 302. 

Johnson, S., xxxiv, xxxvi, lii, 34, 
99, 107, 109, 145-52, his prose 
style, 146-9, 186; his character 
by Boswell, 150-2; 167, 189, 
201, '212, 287, 298, 303, 308, 317, 
321, 325, 345,358, 361, 362, 366, 
373, 2>7^, 387, 397, 409, 414-5- 

"John Woodvill," 226, 401. 

Jonson, Ben, i, 2, 4, 11, 226, 326, 
423-4- 

"Joseph Andrews," 156-8, 160, 
161-2, 2,37- 

"Julia de Roubigne," 154, 343. 

" Julius Caesar," 11. 

Junius, 190, 212, 224, 298, 303, 
324, 345, 393, 414- 

Kames, Lord, xxxiv, xxxv. 
Kant, I., 212, 394, 395, 417. 
Kean, E., 84, 368. 
Keats, John, xvi, xxv, xxxvi, 

xlviii, Iviii, 341, 428-9. 
Kemble, J. P., 84, 310, 367-8. 
" King Lear," 1, liv, 14, 42. 48, 51, 

60, 78, 256-7, 260, 361, 363. 
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 333, 427. 
Kotzebue, A. F. F., xliv. 

La Fontaine, Jean de, 330, 425. 

Lamb, Charles, xvii, xxii, xxvi, 

xxxii, xliii, xliv, xlviii, liii, Ivi, 



Ixi, Ixvii, Ixxi, 18, 71, 83 n., 
154, 209, 220-6, his conversa- 
tion, 225, 302-3, 311; meeting 
with Hazlitt, 300; friendship 
with Hazlitt, 305, 398-400, 417 ; 
his Wednesday .evenings, 302- 
332; 311, 339 n.j 367, 368, 369, 
380, 381, 386, 390, 425, 426. 

Lamb, Mary, xxii, 330, 380, 415. 

Landor, W\ S., xxxiii, 425, 

Lang, Andrew, xxvi. 

" Laodamia," 197. 

" Lara," 242. 

La Rochefoucauld, Frangois de, 
xvi, 330, 425. 

" Launcelot Greaves," 164. 

" Lazarillo de Tormes," 381. 

Leibnitz, G., 210, 327, 391. 

Leonardo da Vinci, 225, 329, 331, 
401. 

Le Sage, Alain, 157, 380. 

Lessing, G. E., 212, 395. 

" Letter of Elia to Robert 
Southey," 400, 417, 

Lewis, M. G., 294, 413. 

Liberal, The, 244, 404. 

Lillie, Charles, 141, Z77- 

Lillo, G., 1, 71, 258, 365. 

Locke, John, 315-6, 328, 338. 

Lockhart, J. G., xxvi, xxvii, 
xxviii, xxxvii-xxxviii, lix. 

London Magazine, xxvi n., 
xxxvii-xxxviii, Ixxi. 

Longinus, xxxiii, xxxv, Ixvii, 
115, 372. 

Lounger, The, 153, 379. 

Lowell, J. R., Ivi, Ixxii-lxxiii. 

Lucas, E. v., 417. 

Luther, Martin, 232, 402. 

" Lutrin," 124, 374. 

" Lyrical Ballads," 192, 198, 291- 
2, 297, 342. 

Lyttleton, Lord, 379. 

MacAdam, J. L., 232, 402. 

Macaulay, T. B., Ixxi, 393. 

" Macbeth," 14, 42, 48, 51, 60-71, 

263, 361, 365, 407. 
Machiavelli, N., 12, 353. 
Mackail, J. W., lii n. 



438 



Index 



Mackenzie, H., 153-4, 343, 379- 

Mackintosh, Sir James, 284, 411. 

Macpherson, J., 409-10. 

Malebranche, N., 210, 390. 

Malthus, T. R., xiv. 

Mandeville, B., 145, 218, 378. 

" Manfred," 244- 

" Man of Feeling," 154, 343. 

" Man of the World, The," 153. 

Mansfield, Lord, 129, 375. 

Marivanx, Pierre, 155, 212, 380. 

Marlborough, Duke of, 141, ^tll- 

Marlowe, Christopher, Ivi, 2, 4, 
16, 326, 338, 421. 

Marston, John, 2, 4, 350. 

Massaccio, 212, 394. 

Michael Angelo, 200, 275, 329, 
425- 

]\Iiddleton, T., 2, 4, 71, 350. 

" Midsummer Night's Dream," 
Iv, 17, 85-7, 363. 

Millar, A., ZZZ, A^7- 

Milman, Henry, xxxvii. 

Milton, John, xlviii, li, lii, liii, 
Ixi, Ixxiii, 4, 7, 22>, 34-5, 41-2, 
44, 47, 101-17, his high seri- 
ousness, 101-4; his learning, 
104; his ideas both musical 
and picturesque, 105-7, 37i ; his 
blank verse, 107-9 ; resem- 
blance to Dante, 114; com- 
pared with Homer, 115; 120, 
149, 189, 200, 211, 224, 265, 298, 
303, 316, 343-4, 406, 408. 

Mirror, The, 153, 379- 

"Misanthrope," 361. 

Moliere, J. B. P., xliii, 97, 252, 
330, 361, 425. 

Montagu, Mrs. Basil, 311, 418. 

Montague, Lady Marv Wortley, 
324- . 

Montaigne, IMichel de, xvi, 134-8, 
139, 146, 330, 376, 401. 

Montesquieu, C. L. de S., 309. 

Moore, Edward, 1, 258, 379, 406. 

Moore, Thomas, xxxvii, Iviii, 
Ixviii. 243. 

More, Hannah, xliv. 

Morgan, Lady, t,2>2,, 426. 

Morgann, Maurice, 359, 369. 



Morley, John, xliv n., 383, 384. 
" Much Ado About Nothing," 

371. 
Murillo, 1, 281, 410. 
Murray, John, xxvii, 289. 

Napoleon, xiii, xxiv, 343 n., 2)7^- 
Neal, Daniel, 211, 391. 
Newcastle, Duchess of, 210, 330, 

390. 
" New Eloise, The," 339. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 145, 315-6, 

389. 
Ninon de Lenclos, 330, 425. 
North, Sir Thomas, 11. 
Northcote, James, Ivii, 307-8, 311, 

401, 418. 

" Ode on the Departing Year," 

290. 
Oldfield, xA.nne, 141, 377. 
Ophelia, 38-9, 82-3, 367. 
Ossian, 271, 275-6, 408, 409-10. 
" Othello," 14, 42, 47, 51, 60. 72-6, 

257, 361, 368. 
Otway, T., 4, 328, 351- 
Ovid, II, 131, 137, 352. 

Paine, Tom, 288, 411. 

Paley, W., 201, 287, 388. 

"Pamela," 166-8. 

" Paradise Lost," xlvii, 303, 310, 

385, 406. 
" Paradise Regained," 303. 
Parnell, T., 224, 400. 
Parr, Samuel, 418. 
" Paul and Virginia," 290. 412-3. 
" Peregrine Pickle," 164, 335. 
" Persian Letters," 152, 379. 
"Peter Bell," 294-5. 
Petrarch, P., 12, 320, 353. 
Phaer, Thomas, 352. 
Phillips, E., 304, 324, 416. 
" Philoctetes," 269, 409. 
" Pilgrim's Progress," li, 32, 

268-9. 
Pindar, 193. 

Pindar, Peter, 219, 311, 396. 
Pitt, Wilham, 177 n., 298. 
Plato, 211, 253, 392. 



Index 



439 



Plotinus, 211, 392. 

Plutarch, 11, 140, 352. 

" Poems on the Naming of 
Places," 290. 

Poetry, epic and dramatic poetry 
distinguished, 43 ; verse its 
obvious distinction, 118, 268-9; 
poetry of art and nature, 119; 
poetry defined, 251 ff. ; 268-9; 
tragic poetry, 256-61 ; poetic 
diction, 261-2; poetry and civ- 
ilization, 262-3 ; poetry and 
painting, 263-5; poetry and 
rhythm, 265-8 n. ; poetry and 
eloquence, 271 n. 

Poole, Tom, 291, 295, 413. 

Pope, Alexander, xlii, xlv, Ivii, 
Ixiii, Ixxii, 32, 107, 109, no, 
118-32, his poetic limitations, 
118; the poet of artificial life, 
119-122; his correctness, 126-7; 
his satire, 128-30; his compli- 
ments, 129-30; his letters, 132; 
136, 141, 200, 224, 245, 260, 268, 
298, 303, 308, 321-3, 342, 357, 
361, 362, 364, 373-4, 414- 

Poussin, Caspar, 296, 413. 

Poussin, Nicolas, 26, 201, 357. 

Priestley, Joseph, xii, xv, xxiii, 
210, 390. 

Proclus, 211, 392. 

Puck, 45, compared with Ariel, 
85-6, 365. 

Quarterly Review, xxv, xxvi, 
xxvii, XXXV, Ixvi. 

Rabelais, F., 48, 212, 330, 425. 
Racine, J., 330, 425. 
Radcliffe, Anne, 337, 383, 427. 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, i, 350. 
Rambler, The, 145-6, 342, 378, 

397- 
" Rape of the Lock," 1, 122-4. 
Raphael, 212, 264, 298 n., 329, 

389, 416, 425. 
" Rasselas," 149, 378. 
"Religious Musings," 211. 
Rembrandt, 202, 263, 329, 388, 

389. 



" Remorse," 214, 299, 396. 

" Return from Parnassus," 17. 

Reynolds, Mrs., 304, 321, 323, 

416. 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 275, 308, 

325, 329, 418. 
Richard II, 43, 365. 
Richard III, compared with 

Macbeth, 68-70, 365. 
Richardson, S., xiii, xHi, Ivii, 

157, 158, 165-70, 270, 298, 303, 

324, 342, 381, 415. 
" Rivals, The," 164. 
Roberts, William, 244, 404. 
Robertson, J. M., Ixxiii n. 
" Robinson Crusoe," li, 201, 

268-9. 
" Roderick Random," 162-4. 
Rogers, Samuel, xxxvi, xxxvii. 
" Romeo and Juliet," liv, 51, 84-5, 

310. 363, 368. 
Ronsard, Pierre, 12, 353. 
" Rosamond Cray," 154, 226, 401. 
Rousseau, J. J., xii, xiii, xvi, 

xxiv, xliv n., 212, 311, 330, 

339-40, 428. 
Rowley, William, 2, 350. 
Rubens, Peter Paul, 30, 329, 357. 

Sainte-Beuve, C. A., xl, Ixx. 

St. Evremont, Ch., 330, 401, 425. 

St. Pierre, B., 413. 

Saintsbury, C, xl n., Ivii, Ixx n., 
Ixxiii n., 366. 

Sallust, 12. 

Salmasius, Claudius, 114, 372. 

Sannazarius, 388. 

Saxo Crammaticus, 15, 353. 

Schelling, F. W. J., 212, 394-5. 

Schiller, Friedrich, xliv, 214, 341, 
409. 

Schlegel, A. W., liii n., liv, Ixxi, 
84, 349, 358, 363, 368, 423- 

Schlegel. F., xxvii n. 

Scott, John, xxvi n., xxviii. 

Scott, Sir Walter, xxviii, xxxvi, 
xxxvii, liii, Iviii-lix, 227-35, 
his novels, 227-30; his freedom 
from prejudice, 230-1 ; his 
Toryism, 231-3; character, 



440 



Index 



234-5 ; compared with Byron, 
236-41, 246-7 ; his poetry, 237-8, 
241; 249, 296, 347, 383, 408, 
427. 

" Sejanus," 11, 424. 
Seneca, 177. 

Settle, Elkanah, 128. 

Shaftesbury, Lord, 138, 377, 408. 

Shakespeare, W., xxvii, xxxiii, 
xxxiv, xHi, xHii, xlv, 1, liii-lvi, 
Ixix, Ixxi, Ixxiii, i, rank 
among contemporaries, 2-5, 35 ; 
II, 13, 14, 17, Z2, 33, 34-100, 
compared with Chaucer, Spen- 
ser, and Milton, 34-5, 40-3 ; • 
compared with modern poets, 
44; universal sympathy of 
mind, 35-40, 119, 358; his imag- 
ination, 45 ; language and 
versification, 46-7; faults, 47-8; 
genius for comedy, 49, 96-9, 
361, 371 ; his women, 49, 51-2, 
362 ; unity of feeling, 56-7, 363 ; 
his morality, 59, 81 ; tragic 
power, 60, 361 ; use of contrast, 
66-7 ; skill in individualizing 
character, 68-70, 85-6, 364-5 ; 
unsuited to stage, 70-1, 83-4, 
87, 369; detachment from his 
characters, 78, 366 ; his poetry, 
99-100; loi, 104, 107, 119, 121, 
158, 189, 200, 224, 229, 258, 268, 
298, 303, 316, 331, 342, 406, 407, 
421-3. 

Shelley, P. B., xi, xxiv, xxv, 
xxxvi, xxxvii, Iviii, 393. 

Shenstone, William, 385. 

Sheridan, R. B., 310. 

Shrewsbury Chronicle, xxiii. 

Siddons, Sarah, 64, 364. 

Sidney, Algernon, 232, 402. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, i, 16, 288, 
303, 316, 354- 

" Sir Charles Grandison," 166, 
168, 169, 270, 324, 383- 

Sir Fopling Flutter, xlviii, 312, 

339, 419- 
Sir Roger de Coverley, 142. 
Smith, Adam, 282, 410. 



Smollett, T., 157-8, 162-5, 224, 
303, 381. 

Socinus, F. P., 211, 391. 

Somers, John, 232, 403. 

Sophocles, 189, 209, 409. 

" Sorrows of Werther," 212, 394. 

South, Robert, 210, 287, 391. 

Southey, Robert, xxviii, xxxvi, 
Iviii, Ixxi, 28, 212, 216-9, 289, 
300,- 395- 

Spectator, The, 141-5, 342, 2,77- 

Spenser, Edmund, hii, Ivii, 
Ixxiii, I, 13, 21-33, his pic- 
turesqueness, 21 ff. ; his alle- 
gory, 25-26; language and 
versification, 32-3 ; 34-5, 103, 
107, 265, 321, 343, 408. 

Spinoza, Baruch, 211, 391. 

de Stael, Madame, xliv, 426. 

Steele, Richard, xxxii, liii, Ivii, 
139, 142, 144, 145, 303, 328. 

Sterne, L., xiii, 153, 157, 158, 
1 70-1, 303, 309, 381, 397- 

Stevenson, R. L., xviii n., xxiii, 
lix. 

Stewart, Dugald, 328, 425. 

Stoddart, Dr., 114, 2)7^- 

Stowe, John, 346, 430. 

Suckling, Sir John, 16. 

Surrey, Earl of, 16, 352, 354. 

Swedenborg, Emanuel, 211, 392. 

Swift, Jonathan, xviii n., Ix, 212, 
303, 328, 377. 

Sylvester, Joshua, 353. 

Tacitus, 12. 

Talfourd, T. N., Ixxii, 379. 

" Tartuffe," 361. 

Tasso, T., xliii, 11, 24 n., 112, 243, 

352. 
Tatler, The, 139, 140-5, 342, 2>77' 
Taylor, Jeremy, liii, 211, 298, 392. 
" Tempest," 13, 85-6, 363. 
Temple, Sir WiUiam, 138, 2>77- 
Thackeray, W. M., Ixii. 
Thomson, James, 109, 200, 212, 

297, 328. 
Thucydides, 346, 430. 
Thurloe, John, ZZ3, 427. 
Tillotson, John, 210, 391. 



Index 



441 



" Timon of Athens," 48, 361. 
Titian, 264, 308, 320, 329, 343, 

3^7, 389. 
" Tom Jones," xlviii, 159-60, 162- 

3, 290, 335-7. 
Tooke, Home, 309, 310, 327, 418. 
" Troilus and Cressida," 45. 
Tucker, Abraham, xiv. 
Turberville, George, 352-3. 
Turenne, Marshal, 141, 2>77- 
'.'Twelfth Night," 96-100. 
'* Two Noble Kinsmen," 17. 
Twyne, Thomas, 352. 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 97, 141, 371. 
Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 329, 

389, 425. 
Velasquez, 281, 410. 
"Venice Preserved," 351. 
Veronese, Paul, 228, 402. 
Virgil, II, 137, 140, 297, 352. 
" Vision of Judgment," 248, 289, 

404-5. 
Voltaire, F. M. A., xliv, 48, 212, 

330, 389, 401, 425. 

Waithman, Robert, 226, 401. 
" Wallenstein," 214, 396. 
Walton, Izaak, 201, 387-8. 
Warton, Joseph, xxxv, 408. 
Waterloo, Antoine, 201, 388. 
Waverley Novels, 224, 228-30, 

240, 303, 3^3- 
Webster, John, Ivi, i, 4, 326, 

421-2. 



Wedgwood, Tom, 284-6, 411. 

Whateley, Thomas, 365. 

White, James, 304, 416. 

"Whole Duty of Man," 81. 

Wickliff, John, 2^2, 402. 

Wilson, John, xxvi, xxviii. 

W^olcot, John. See Peter Pin- 
dar. 

Wolstonecraft, Mary, 284-5, 3ii, 
393, 411- 

Wordsworth, W., xi, xxviii-xxix, 
xxxvi, xxxvii, xxxviii, xliii, 
xlviii, Hii, Iviii-lix, Ixix, 3, 109, 
191-204, the poet of simple 
humanity, 191 ; his democracy, 
192 ; defiance of convention, 
192-4; poet of nature, 195-6; 
his philosophic vein, 196-8 ; his 
appearance, voice, and man- 
ner, 198-9, 293-5; his opinions 
of poets and painters, 199-202, 
388-9; "the child of disap- 
pointment," 203-4 ; 216, 242, 
244, 284, 290-5, meeting with 
Hazlitt, 293; 297, 311, 345, 386, 

395, 413- 
World, The, 152, 342, 379. 
Wycherley, William, 97, 371. 

Young, Edward, 109, 366. 

Zanga, 76. 
Zisca, John, 211, 391. 



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